The Heir Presumptive and the Heir Apparent

by Mrs. Oliphant

Those cheerful tones found no response in the countenance of Letitia, which was tragical in the paleness of passionate feeling. Every word that was uttered by the medical optimist was like a knell in Letitia’s heart. If it should be so indeed—but it could not, it would not be so.

“Mrs. Parke has always taken too serious a view,” said the cheerful doctor. “I have told her so for years.”

“I don’t say that I don’t always take a serious view,” said Letitia. “It is my temperament I suppose—but you will bear me witness, doctor, that I never have been so anxious about my own children as I have been about Mar.”

“Yes, that is true,” said the doctor, with a quick glance at her, in which there was something uncertain, doubtful. Perhaps it was the look of suppressed excitement in her which struck Dr. Barker as something strange. She was not an over-anxious mother. Was it love or another sentiment that made her so tragic about Mar? A slight shiver ran over the honest and sensible country practitioner, but he was far too little accustomed to evil passions to follow it further. He could not take into his mind such a dreadful thought; it was like a ghostly figure sweeping by in the dark, such as he sometimes met on lonely roads on winter nights—not able to tell whether it was a belated fugitive or a distorted shadow. Another subject of more practical importance, as he thought, displaced this vague apprehension. “By the by,” he said, “I must not forget one thing. I have been talking to you of the state of those cottages on the other side of the park for years. I’ve got the water to analyze which these poor people are drinking, and I believe it’s the cause of poor young Frogmore’s illness. Let this be a reason at once for seeing after their condition: at least it will be getting some good out of the evil which now you cannot prevent. You know I’ve been talking about it for years.”

“The cottages?” said John. He added, “You know I’m in a peculiar position, I can do nothing without Blotting. It’s not as if it was my own property.”

“Oh what is the use of talking of such things just now,” said Letitia, sharply. There was a sort of half electrical glance between the two which the doctor felt to blaze across him, scorching his face. He gave a horrified look from one to the other, surprising that infernal light in Letitia’s eyes. But John’s were covered with downcast eyelids, and the look of his somewhat heavy face did not coincide with that unearthly, devilish flash. Dr. Barker, however, was struck as a man might be struck by lightning. He seemed to lose his moral equilibrium for the moment. A chill horror ran in his veins. When he thought of the boy-patient upstairs with his cheeks growing hollow and his eyes large under the influence of the fever, and these two, watching its progress, perhaps communicating to each other how things were going, hoping for the worst and not the better conclusion, it was as if the earth had been cut away from under his feet, and he saw himself suddenly on the edge of a horrible precipice. He rode away upon his rounds with a doubt whether it was safe to leave the house, whether he ought not to set up some special guard that no evil should approach the boy. Poor boy, with no one who loved him to look after him, but only dangerous hate and the vigilance of an enemy! The honest country doctor had never in his life been struck as he was that day with a sense of secret horror, danger, and possible crime concealed under the smooth surface of ordinary existence. Twice he turned back before he had got out of the avenue with the idea of warning his nurses, recommending to them special vigilance, and not to allow Mrs. Parke to have anything to do with the patient. But how dared he do such a thing, to rouse any suspicion of the mistress of the house? He had no evidence but a glance, and who could rely upon a look? He might, very probably had, must have, mistaken it; and twice he turned his horse, and at last rode away, but with a mind troubled by many anxious thoughts. He consoled himself by thinking that with two nurses on whom he could depend no harm could happen to the patient. But after all it was not so much the harm that could happen as the dreadful idea that his nearest relations were watching by his sick bed, hoping that he might never rise from it, that upset the doctor. He said to himself that between that and doing anything to expedite the end there was a great difference, and perhaps it was impossible when there was so much at stake not to be conscious what a difference it would make. Dr. Barker had been in the district a long time, and remembered Lord Frogmore’s marriage, and how everybody said it was very hard upon John Parke. So it was, very hard. To expect so long that he was to be his brother’s heir, and then to be suddenly cut out. There had been a great deal of sympathy with him at the time, and perhaps it was impossible now not to think if the boy was removed—— Perhaps it was natural, inevitable, that the disappointed pair should be open to that thought. But to imagine them watching, waiting, while the innocent boy lay ill, hoping for a bad turn, higher fever, hopeless complications—— Good heavens, could anything more dreadful be?

John Parke was innocent of entertaining such thoughts. But he divined them, and his heart was wrung within him. He scarcely spoke to Letitia while the fever strengthened its hold upon Mar, but went solemnly morning and evening to the door to ask of the nurses how their patient was. Sometimes he stood at the open door looking in, saying as well as he could a cheerful good-morning to the boy. “Make haste and get well, my lad,” he would say; and John, though he was not given to anything of the kind, would sometimes bring a rose and sometimes a piece of flowering myrtle from the great tree at the door of the conservatory to lay on the little table at Mar’s bedside. Mar, when he was able to remark them, was much touched by these little attentions, and John would go away again soothed by the sight of the active nurses in their white aprons, and the quiet and order of the sick room. It was a comfort to think that everything was being done. This is a great consolation to every kind looker-on whose anxiety is less urgent than that of love. John never saw Letitia there; he knew that the nurse who was on duty, if moved by no profound sentiment for one patient more than another was yet on the whole desirous that every one should get well, and had her professional reputation more or less involved in the success of her nursing. There was thus at least no hostile sentiment, only well wishers, careful watchers, concerned for his recovery, who were near the boy.

But neither he nor any one any more than the doctor had any fear of Letitia as if she had been capable of plotting against the young life. No, no, no, a hundred times no. They divined the passion that was in her, the sense of a possibility which would change everything in life, and perhaps, perhaps a wish against which in her heart no doubt she struggled, and would not allow that the balance should turn the wrong way. John pushed the thought from him with passion, ashamed of himself for his suspicion of his wife. He felt that she would not be sorry for Mar’s obliteration—such a faint, young, powerless personality—from existence: which would have such tremendous consequences that her mind was carried away by them. And that was bad enough, but it was all. She would not harm him any more than she would harm Duke; and at the utmost, when all was said, the only evidence against Letitia even to this extent was a strange gleam which had got into her eyes.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Mar’s illness continued week after week, never violent, but never ending. He was not very ill, but his life was being slowly drained away. The fire of the fever was low, not a great flame, blazing and devouring, but it went on and on. The third week passed, and the fourth, with renewed and disappointed expectations of a change, but none came. “It will run out the six weeks,” said the doctor. “And then—?” Ah, who could say. The good doctor, who had taken care of Mar all his life, turned away from the question. “It all depends upon his strength,” he said. His strength! but he had no strength. He was as weak as a child. The nurse lifted him in her arms like an infant—a skeleton, with long, long limbs. It seemed a farce to speak of his strength, as if there was any hope in that.