“She asks me where?” cried Lady Frogmore, appealing in her excitement to the maid. “She asks me where, and she knows my boy is in that woman’s hands—my child in that woman’s hands: She said, may he grow up an idiot—my child, my baby! and he is in her hands. Oh, quick, quick, give me my things! Order the carriage! There is a train, early, that we went by before. Oh, the slow, horrible train it is, I remember, stopping everywhere; but at least don’t let us lose it now.”
“Is it to the Park you are going, Mary?”
“Where else?” cried Lady Frogmore; “is not my child there? and in her hands.” She was too impatient to accept the usual services of her maid, but dressed herself in wild haste, her trembling hands tying strings and fastening buttons all wrong. Her two attendants could do little but look on as in her agitation she snatched at everything. The gentle Mary, always so tranquil and mild, was transfigured with passion and eagerness. When she heard that it was loo late for the morning train, it was a shriek rather than a cry which burst from her breast. “Oh, why did you let me sleep? Why did I sleep?” she cried bitterly. There was no possibility of calming her, no means of explaining how they had arranged everything for her comfort that she might rest after her unusual excitement and exhaustion. She, rest! Mary, who had been the object of unceasing care for years, whose every mood had been considered, and from whom everybody near warded and kept off any possible shade of annoyance, forgot all that in a moment. She became the Mary of old, she who was Letitia’s right hand, she who spared no trouble, who thought of everybody but herself. Mary was as much surprised at being the first to be thought of, at having her rest cared for, as if that long time of care and observance had never been. “Rest for me,” she cried. “You should have known better, Agnes—you might have known I should not rest till I have seen my boy.” She woke without a cloud upon her memory of that fact, but with this new dread sprung up in her mind which could not be calmed down. They set off in time for a later train after a weary interval of waiting, an interval that seemed to both as if it would never end. Mary had been seized in the new sense of motherhood with a panic and fear of alarm which nothing could quench. She who had forgiven everything to Letitia, who had thought of nothing either in her madness or her recovery but the interests of her former friend, now feared her as if she were a criminal, and felt that every moment the heir remained in her hands was a moment of danger. “She will do him no harm,” Agnes tried to say. “She is not kind. She does not love him, but she will do him no harm.” Mary would not listen to this voice of reason. The woman who had wished that the unborn child should grow up an idiot and kill his parents appeared in no light but that of a possible murderess to her who had newly discovered his existence and that she was his mother. She waved off her sister’s soothing words. She put Agnes herself—Agnes who had loved him always, who had been his first guardian, all the mother he had ever known—in a secondary place as one who could not divine the passion of the mother love. “It is easy for you to speak,” she said, crying out in her impatience that the horses crept, that they would be too late for the train, and then that the train itself was like a country cart, and would not go. Then there came those long waitings at the junction, the interval between one little country conveyance and another. The rain of yesterday had all passed away. The day was bright, illuminating the face of the country, mocking at the heaviness of the travellers. Lady Frogmore was flushed and eager, full of enquiry, walking about during the times of waiting, explaining to everybody that she was going to her son, to bring him home, to the great confusion of those who knew her story, and new too that Mar lay dying. Her acquaintances looked at her with trouble and suspicion, looked anxiously aside at Ford, who followed her mistress about as she walked up and down. Had poor Lady Frogmore’s brain given way again, was what they asked each other with their eyes? But it was none of their business, and there was no one important enough to interfere.
As for Agnes, she was incapable of any activity. When she was permitted to be quiet for a moment there fell upon her heart the other dreadful burden which Mary had not understood, which Agnes shrank from insisting upon. Was it all too late, too late, a terrible irony of Providence which sometimes seems to keep the word of promise to the ear, as well as the pagan fates, to give when the gift is no longer of any use? Was his mother hurrying in all the new passion of her love and trust to find no child, no son, but only what was mortal, the poor cast-off garment of flesh that had once been her boy? Was it all over, that struggle? or had it perhaps ended, as the nurse hoped, in life and not in death? As she approached the time when she should know, Agnes’ mind began to play with this hope: tremulous gleams of happiness and possibility flashing before her eyes, which she dared not receive or dwell upon, but which came to her without any will of hers, flaming through the dark, lighting up the skies, then sinking into greater gloom than ever. While Mary walked about in the intervals of waiting, Agnes sat out of sight in the most retired corner she could find, dumb and faint with the awful suspense. She could not communicate to her sister what she feared, yet feared doubly for the consequence to Mary if in the heat of her newly awakened feeling she should come suddenly against that thick blank of loss. Oh, to forestall the wrong turn, to know what a few hours might bring forth—happiness, the perfection being a new life, a brighter world—or madness, misery and death? Thus the one sister sat dumb and incapable of speech, her throat dry and her lips parched, while the other, all energy and eagerness, soothed her impatience by movement and eager communication of her purpose—going to find her boy.
The railways have almost annihilated distance everybody says, and it is true. But when a succession of slow country trains on cross lines have to be gone through, with many pauses, stoppages, and changes, there is nothing which gives the same impression of delay and miserable tardihood. To haste for a little time towards your end, and then to stop and spend as long a time or longer in aimless waiting, repeating the same again and again in an afternoon’s journey! No wagon on the country road seems to be so slow, so lingering, so impossible to quicken. It was dark when they arrived at the nearest station to the Park, and then a long interval followed before they could obtain the broken-down rattling, clattering country fly which drove them six miles further to the Park. It was all that Agnes’ lips could do to utter an inquiry “How is Lord Frogmore?” when the keeper of the lodge awoke, up out of his first sleep, stumbled forth to open the gate, half reluctant to admit visitors at such an hour. “I think I heard as the young lord’s a bit better,” said the yawning lodge-keeper. Her heart leapt up, almost choking her in her sudden relief. But how did she dare to trust this indifferent outsider, who cared nothing? At least, at least, he lived still, which was much. Mary had grown quite silent in the excitement of the arrival. She put her hand into her sister’s and grasped it as if to keep herself up, but said nothing. They dismounted out of the noisy fly at the end of the avenue, Mary obeying the impulse of Agnes, asking no reason. There were still lights about the upper windows, and a glimmer in the hall, the door of which was opened to them by a servant who was in waiting, and who at first looked as if he would refuse them admittance, but gave way at the sight of the two ladies. He gave Agnes in a subdued whisper the bulletin, “A little better—fever diminished,” which in the instantaneous and unspeakable relief, took all strength and power to move from her after all her sufferings. She leaned back upon Ford, nearly fainting, her eyes closing, her limbs refusing to support her. In that moment Lady Frogmore drew her hand from her sister’s. She asked no questions. No weakness or sinking of heart or courage was in her. She neither looked nor spoke to any one round her, but swiftly detaching herself, throwing off her cloak, disappeared up the great, partially-lighted staircase as swift and as noiseless as a ghost.
CHAPTER XLV.
The day after the hurried visit of Agnes to the Park had been one of gathering darkness, and exhaustion to the young sufferer. He was so ill and had been ill so long that the interest of the household had almost come to an end. There was nothing to be done for him, not even the beef tea to prepare, the variety of drinks which had kept up a certain link of service between the sick room and the rest of the house. All that seemed over. He had passed from the necessities of life while still living, and now there was nothing but a half-impatient waiting—a longing of strained nerves and attention for the end of the suspense—till all should be over, and the little tale told out.
Letitia, who felt herself the chief person involved, did not feel even impatient that day. It was by this time a foregone conclusion, a question of time. The doctor even had said scarcely anything, had only shaken his head, and even the cheerful nurse, the woman of daylight and good hope, was daunted, and did not repeat her better auguries. John, who had avoided his wife, who had refused to discuss the subject, now let her speak, sitting with his head bent on his breast, and making little reply, but still listening to what she said. She had a great many plans, indeed had drawn out in her active mind a whole scheme of proceedings for their future guidance, of changes to be made both for pleasure and profit, things of much more importance than these alterations in the house on which she had set her mind the first time she came into it. Letitia spoke low, but she spoke boldly, bidding her husband remember that though it was very sad it was a thing that had always been necessary to look forward to, and that after all it was his just inheritance that was now coming to him. And John had not stopped her to-day. It was all true enough. The poor boy had been an interruption to the course of events, and now things were returning to their natural course. He had a soft heart, and it was sore for the poor boy; but Letitia had reason on her side, and what she said was not to be refuted or despised.
She was very busy that day, not going out for her drive or receiving any visitors, not even any of the anxious inquirers who came to beg for a little more information than the bulletin gave—the clerical people about, and the, nearest neighbors, whom hitherto she had allowed to enter; very busy in her own room planning out a great many things. It would make a change to everybody—a different style of living, a great extension and amplification would now not only be possible but necessary. She put it all down on paper, making out her arrangements systematically, which was an exercise that she loved. If the poor boy lingered for a week longer that would make no difference after all. She had promised to Duke to send for him if Mar became worse; but she decided that she would not do so, for what would be the good? Mar was far too weak to take an interest in any one, perhaps even to recognize his cousin. And Letitia felt that she could not bear the noisy grief with which her son would no doubt receive the news, which was the best news for him that could possibly be. It was bad enough to see Letty with her red eyes moping about the house, and Tiny devoting herself to her lessons as if the mortification of her soul over them was more appropriate to the crisis than anything she cared for. Little fools! who did not know what was to their advantage! But even to them it would not make the difference it would make to Duke. For Duke there could be no doubt it was the one thing to be desired; yet Letitia knew he would make a greater fuss than even the girls were doing, and this she could not bear.
Next morning she was a little later than usual in leaving her room. She had not slept well. Her mind had been so full of all that she had to do. It was not anxiety that kept her awake, for anxiety had almost left her in the certainty of what was going to happen; but merely the preoccupation of her mind and the responsibility on her shoulders of seeing that everything was done in this emergency so as to secure the approval of the world. Though her mind was full of exultation, she was most anxious not to show it; not to be spoken of as heartless or worldly. A slight fear that she had committed herself to the attendants of the sick room, and that they had penetrated her true feelings, troubled her a little; but what did a couple of nurses matter? She was so late that morning that she did not as usual see the night nurse, with her lugubrious countenance, shaking her head as she went to take her necessary rest. Letitia liked the night nurse best. She had always thought the other too hopeful; but what did it matter now what one thought or the other? She went direct to the sick room when she left her own, putting on as she went the necessary solemnity of countenance with which to receive what there would be no doubt would be bad news. It startled her a little to hear an unusual murmur of voices in the ante-room where the doctor was in the habit of pausing to give his directions. She could not hear what they said, but there was something in the tone of the consultation which struck her, like a sudden dart thrown from some unseen hand. What did it mean? She went into the room quickly, her composure disturbed, though she would not allow herself to think there was any reason. What reason could there be? The first thing Letitia saw was the nurse crying—the cheerful nurse—the fool of an optimist who had always said he would get better. Ah! all was over then? This woman had the folly to allow herself to get interested in the case; and, besides, might well be crying too for the end of a good job. A spirit of malice and fierce opposition somehow sprung up in Letitia’s mind, and prompted this mean thought. Yes, it was the end of a good job, of good feeding and good pay, and very easy work. No wonder she cried; and to make herself interesting, too, in the doctor’s eyes. This flashed through Mrs. Parke’s mind in a second, while she was walking into the room. It broke up her calm, but rather with a fierce impulse of impatience and desire to take the hussy by the shoulders than with any real fear.