“Oh hold your tongue, Tiny. He will be too ill to read books,” said Letty with tears, “and one must not let him talk either, but just a very little—nor even talk to him to amuse him till the fever goes off.”
“How dull it will be for Mar!” cried Tiny. “I am sure I shall talk to him and tell him everything. To be dull is as bad as having a fever. Because you have gone to the ambulances you think you know—but I don’t believe in keeping people so quiet. When I had the measles——”
“Be quiet both of you,” said Mrs. Parke, “and understand that neither of you go near Mar. He must be left in the hands of the nurses—it is too serious to play with. I shall go myself every day to see that all is right.”
There was a chorus of outcries at this decision, but Mrs. Parke was not moved. “No one must disturb him,” she repeated. “The people who have the best chance are the people in the hospitals—and Mar must be treated just as if he were in a hospital.—I will not have him disturbed.”
“Is it so grave as that, Letitia?” asked John, very seriously, scarcely looking at her. He began to divine partly from that gleam which had come upon himself what must be in her mind.
“Nothing could be more grave,” she said, vehemently; “anyone except a schoolboy or a silly girl must see that. What Duke says is nonsense. It stands to reason that a weakly boy with no constitution to fall back upon, attacked by a slow disease that eats away the strength——”
John Parke rose as if the thought were intolerable, and went out of the room hurriedly. He was trying to escape from that devilish suggestion. The boy would die; all the hindrances would be removed; the inheritance would be his which he had always looked forward to, which had been supposed to be his all his life. Not in John’s honest brain was that thought bred. It filled him with horror of himself. It made him feel as if he were Mar’s murderer, anticipating the boy’s doom. “God forgive me! God forgive me!” cried John: and he went out covered with a cold dew of trouble to humble himself and struggle with the demon. These horrible suggestions come sometimes to the minds that most loathe them: which proves to many people that there is a devil, a dreadful Satan, trying what harm he can do, even though we grow contemptuous of the horns and hoofs.
The doctor, however, was not so gloomy as Letitia. “It is quite true that he must not be disturbed; but keeping up his spirits is half the battle, and he must not be abandoned either. Mrs. Parke is too anxious. I have always told her she made more than was necessary of young Frogmore’s complaints. He’s delicate, of course. Still there’s no reason for giving up hope.”
“My boy, Duke,” said John, “says that it’s worse for strong fellows than for weak. I don’t know if he’s right.”
“Well, it’s never a good thing to be weak,” said Dr. Barker, “but there’s a kind of truth in it. For the fever sometimes runs higher with a man in the prime of life. Keep up your spirits. If no complications arise we’ll pull him through.”