CHAPTER XLII.
When the ladies got back to the Dower House, Letitia’s letter was awaiting them. Agnes had not known what to say on the way. She had maintained the little fiction of the headache, with which Mary sympathized tenderly, and lay back in the corner of the carriage wondering what she should, what she could do. Endure for this night, at least, that expedient which is always the nearest to a woman, and in the morning on some pretence, with some excuse which did not yet occur to her, go in her own person and see for herself. This was all that Agnes could decide upon. And when she reached home Letitia’s letter was the first thing that met her eye. She devoured it, standing in the hall, while Mary went in. A letter which carries a sentence of death may look as little important as a letter which conveys an invitation to tea, and Mary made no inquiries. That she should pass tranquilly through the hall and go into the drawing-room, while Agnes was reading of her only child’s illness, struck her sister as a hideous cruelty and want of heart. She had said to herself she would disturb Mary no more, she would not attempt to awaken the feeling which had lain so long dormant, which surely was now beyond hope. But it was as a bitter offence and wrong to Agnes when Lady Frogmore went past her with a cheerful word to the maid who came to take her shawl, and a mind entirely at ease while Mar’s fate was being sealed. For Letitia’s letter left very little doubt as to the boy’s fate. “I will let you know if anything happens. That is—” Agnes said to herself, with a gasp of anguish, “if he dies.” Oh heaven! and he might be dying now alone with the trained nurses, nobody near him who loved him! Alas, poor Mar! who was there in the world who loved him? except, perhaps, herself, who had been the only mother his infancy had known, and she was useless to him, unable to do anything for him!
It was a long time before Agnes could face the light and her sister’s tranquil looks. She went to her room and fell on her knees and prayed with that passionate remonstrance and appeal, and almost reproach, with which we fly to God when He seems about to cut off from us the thing we hold most dear—pleading, putting forth every argument, reasoning with the Supreme Disposer of events, arguing and explaining to Him how it could not, must not be—as we all do, when prayer, which is so often a mere formality, becomes the outcry of mortal disquietude. The tears which she shed, the struggle which she went through, exhausted her so, that for the moment her misery was weakened with her strength. Mary, waiting tranquilly for her downstairs, believed that Agnes had lain down a little, her head being so bad, and approved it as the wisest thing to do. “Don’t disturb Miss Hill, she has a bad headache,” she said. And so Agnes was left alone to have her struggle out.
“Are you better, dear?” said Mary, in her quiet voice, when her sister came in, in the twilight, just before dinner. Agnes had changed her dress as usual, and in the dim light it was impossible to see how pale she was, and the signs of trouble in her face.
“I have news from Letitia,” said Agnes, “bad news—they have illness at the Park. I think I will go to-morrow, if you can spare me, Mary, and see for myself.”
“At the Park?” Lady Frogmore paused with nervous questions on her lips—Was it Duke? Was it anything infectious? Was it——? She paused, and instinct taught her that her sister’s desire to go and see for herself could mean only one thing. The boy—— She never to herself called him anything but the boy, and never thought of him—which she did seldom and unwillingly, never when she could help it—without a strange tremor and sinking at her heart.
“Is it——?” she said, but she could not put even that formula or ask, is it he? “Is it—serious?” she added in a very low voice.
“I think she thinks he is dying—and she wants no one to come—he has two nurses—and she says she will write if anything happens. If anything happens! Oh, my God, my boy! with no one near him that cares for him. I must go to-morrow, Mary.”
Lady Frogmore patted her sister’s shoulder with her hand. Her own child! and yet it was for Agnes that she felt—for her great trouble. “Yes,” she said, “you must go,” with a strange piteous tone which her sister did not understand, and indeed in the throng of her own emotions did not perceive.
“She never says a word of sorrow or regret. She is glad, that dreadful woman! Now,” cried Agnes, “it will be all hers, she thinks—there will be no one in her way.”