“Oh, doctor—she wished her own boy to be in his place,” said the nurse, who perhaps had a semi-maternal light upon the matter. The doctor kept on shaking his head as he finished his prescription.
“Don’t wake him for this or anything—not even for food; but give him the food as I told you.”
“I know, I know,” said the nurse, on whom the overstrain of her nerves was telling, too; “don’t you think I know, sir, how important it is.”
“Don’t you go off, too—don’t leave him for a moment. Avoid all noise or discussion. Try and keep everyone out, especially——” He did not finish his sentence, but it was unnecessary.
“All I can do, doctor—all I can do. But Mrs. Parke is the mistress of the house.”
“She will not come back again,” he said, “she will be in a terrible fright when she knows how she betrayed herself. Poor thing! as you say, it was to put her boy in his place. They were wild before when this boy was born. Well, perhaps there is some excuse for them.”
“But you will come back to-night?”
“I should think so, indeed,” he said, “and before to-night. And I shall see John Parke as I go.”
But by that strange influence which nobody can explain, before the doctor left the room the news had somehow flashed through the house. The fever gone! John Parke came out into the hall as Dr. Barker came downstairs. “Is it true?” he said. It would be vain to assert that there was not a dull throb which was not of pleasure or gratitude through John Parke’s being when that rumor had come to him. The cup was dashed from his lips again, and this time for ever. He had to pause a moment in the library, where he was sitting, thinking involuntarily of the new life, to gulp down something—which shamed him to the bottom of his heart. But when he came out to meet the doctor that very shock had brought all his tenderer feelings back. “Is it true?” he said with a quiver of emotion in his voice. And at that moment Letty came flying in from the park and flung herself upon his neck, and kissed him like a whirlwind. “Oh, papa, Mar’s better!” she said, her voice between a soft shout and song of joy ringing through the great house. There was no doubt, no hesitation in Letty’s rapture and thankfulness. And it was with almost as true a heart, notwithstanding his momentary pang of feeling, that John grasped the doctor’s hand and said “Thank God.”
How the news ran through the house! It was known before it was ever spoken at all to the cook, who immediately rose from the retirement in which she was considering her menu, and ordered a delicate young chicken to be prepared to make soup. “I know what’s wanted after a fever. Something hevery hour,” said that dignitary. It swept up like a breeze to the housemaids upstairs busy with their work. “Oh, that’s what’s put the Missis in such a passion,” they said with unerring logic. Tiny, released from her lessons by the same instinctive consciousness of something, danced a wild jig round the hall to the tune of “Mar’s better. Mar’s better!” all her hair floating about her, and her shoes coming off in her frenzy. And thus nature and human feeling held the day and reigned triumphant, notwithstanding the fierce tragedy, indescribable, terrible—a passion which rent the very soul, and to which no crime, no horror was impossible, which raged and exhausted itself in the silence, shut up with itself and all devilish impulses in the best room, in the bosom of the mistress of the house.