Very shortly she was to suffer from a different fever: one that sometimes proves to be just as difficult of cure. In spite of the gaiety and the going-out, Lucy seemed to be somewhat ailing: her appetite failed, and she grew to feel tired at nothing. In July these symptoms had increased, and she was palpably ill. The medical man called in, pronounced Miss Cleeve to be suffering from a slight fever, combined with threatenings of ague. The slight fever grew into a greater one, and then became intermittent. Intervals of shivering coldness would be succeeded by intervals of burning heat; and they in their turn by intense prostration. The doctor said Miss Cleeve must have taken cold; probably, he thought, had sat on damp grass at some picnic. Lucy was very obedient. She lay in bed when they told her to lie, and got up when they told her to get up, and took all the medicine ordered without a word, and tried to take the food. The doctor, at length, with much self-gratulation, declared the fever at an end; and that Miss Cleeve might come out of her bedroom for some hours in the day. Miss Cleeve did so come: but somehow she did not gain strength, or improve as she ought to have done. Seasons of chilling coldness would be upon her still, the white cheeks would sometimes be bright with a very suspicious-looking dash of hectic. It would take time to re-establish her, said the doctor with a sigh: and that was the best he could make of it.
Whether Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve would have chosen to speak much before their daughter of the lover she had been obliged to resign, cannot be said. Most probably not. But circumstances over which they had no control led to its being done. When, towards the close of June, the news of that strange tragedy enacted by Adam Andinnian broke upon the world, all the world was full of it. Not a visitor, calling to see them, but went over the marvellous wonders of the tale in Lucy's hearing, and, as it seemed to her, for her own special benefit. The entirely unprovoked (as was at first said and supposed) nature of the crime; the singular fact that it should have been committed the very day of his assuming his rank amidst the baronetage of the kingdom; the departure of Mrs. Andinnian on the journey that he ought to have taken, and the miserable thought, so full of poignancy to the Andinnian family, that if he had gone, the calamity could not have happened; the summons to the young lieutenant at Winchester, his difficulty with the telegram, and his arrival at night to find what had happened at the desolate house! All these facts, and very many more details, some true, some untrue, were brought before Lucy day after day. To escape them was impossible, unless she had shut herself up from society, for men and women's mouths were full of them; and none had the least suspicion that the name of Andinnian was more than any other name to Lucy Cleeve. It was subsequent to this, you of course understand, that she became ill. During this period, she was only somewhat ailing, and was going about just as other people went.
The subject--it has been already said--did not die out quickly. Before it was allowed to do so, there came the trial; and that and its proceedings kept it alive for many a day more. But that the matter altogether bore an unusual interest, and that a great deal of what is called romance, by which public imagination is fed, encompassed it, was undeniable. The step in rank attained by Lieutenant Andinnian, his captaincy, was dismissed and re-discussed as though no man had ever taken it before. So that, long ere the period now arrived at, August, Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve talked of the Andinnian affairs before their daughter with as little thought of reticence as they would have given to the most common questions of everyday life, and perhaps had nearly forgotten that there had ever been a cause why they should observe it.
A word of Miss Blake. That the perfidy--she looked upon it as such--of Lieutenant Andinnian in regard to herself, was a very bitter blow and tried her heart nearly as the separation was trying Lucy's, may at once be admitted. Nothing, in the world or out of it, would have persuaded her that the young man did not at an early period love her, that he would have ultimately married her but for the stepping in between them of Lucy Cleeve: and there lay a very angry and bitter feeling against Lucy at the bottom of her heart. Not against Mr. Andinnian. The first shock over, she quite exonerated him, and threw all the weight of blame on Lucy. Is it not ever so--that woman, in a case of rivalry such as this, detests and misjudges the woman, and exempts the man?
But Miss Blake had a very strict conscience. In one of more gentle and tender nature, this would have been an admirable thing; in her, whose nature was exceptionally hard, it might cause her to grow into something undesirably stern. There was a chance for her yet. Underlying her every thought, word, action, her witty sallies in
the ball-room, her prayers in church, remained ever the one faint hope--that Karl Andinnian would recover his senses and return to his first allegiance. If this ever came to pass, and she became Mrs. Andinnian, the little kindness existing in Theresa Blake's nature would assert itself. For, though she was very just, or strove to be, she was not kind.
With this strict conscience, Miss Blake could not encourage her
ill-feeling towards Lucy. On the contrary, she put it resolutely from her, and strove to go on her way in a duteous course of life and take up her own sorrow as a kind of appointed cross. All very well, this, so far as it went: but there was one dreadful want ever making itself heard--the want to fill the aching void in her lonely heart. After a disappointment to the affections, all women feel this need; and none unless they have felt it, can know or imagine the intense need of it. When the heart has been filled to the uttermost with a beloved object, every hour of the day gladdened with his sight, every dream of the night rejoicing with the thought of the morning's renewed meeting, and he is compulsorily snatched away for ever, the awful blank left is almost worse than death. Every aim and end and hope in life seems to have died suddenly out, leaving only a vacuum: a vacuum that tells of nothing but pain. But for finding some object which the mind can take up and concentrate itself upon, there are women who could go mad. Miss Blake found hers in religion.
Close upon that night when you saw Mr. Andinnian and Lucy Cleeve pacing together the garden of the Reverend Mr. Blake's rectory, Mr. Blake was seized with a fit. The attack was not in itself very formidable, but it bore threatening symptoms for the future. Perfect rest was enjoined by his medical attendants, together with absence from the scene of his labours. As soon, therefore, as he could be moved, Mr. Blake departed; leaving his church in the charge of his many-years curate, and of a younger man who was hastily engaged to assist him. This last was a stranger in the place, the Reverend Guy Cattacomb. Now, singular to say, but it was the fact, immediately after Mr. Blake's departure, the old curate was incapacitated by an attack of very serious illness, and he also had to go away for rest and change. This left the church wholly in the hands of the new man, Mr. Cattacomb. And this most zealous but rather mistaken divine, at once set about introducing various changes in the service; asking nobody's permission, or saying with your leave, or by your leave.
The service had hitherto been conducted reverently, plainly, and
with thorough efficiency. The singing was good; the singers--men and boys--wore white surplices: in short, all things were done decently and in order: and both Mr. Blake and his curate were excellent preachers. To the exceeding astonishment of the congregation, Mr. Cattacomb swooped down upon them the very first Sunday he was left to himself, with what they were pleased to term "vagaries." Vagaries they undoubtedly were, and not only needless ones, but such as were calculated to bring a wholesome and sound Protestant church into disrepute. The congregation remonstrated, but the Reverend Guy persisted. The power for the time being, lay in his hands, and he used it after his own heart.
"Man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the
angels weep."
How applicable are those lines of Shakespeare's to some of the
overzealous young divines of the present day!