“But I see very little difference,” she said. “He seems to me just as ill as ever, too weak to move, and scarcely opening his eyes.”
“But the fever is gone,” they all cried together.
Letitia shook her head, “I hope the doctor was not mistaken,” she said. Her words threw a cold chill upon the household after the delight of the morning. But that was all. “Missis was always one to take the worst view of everything,” the cook remarked, to whom the undeniable proof of improvement which Mar had shown by swallowing his chicken broth was a proof that needed no confirmation. She sent up a little of the same broth to Mrs. Parke, hearing that she had a headache, and received a message back to the effect that the soup was very good, and that it must be kept always going, always ready, as the young gentleman was able to take it. “But I’ll try him with a bit of chicken to-morrow, no more slops,” said the cook. Thus, though she shook her head and owned that she was not herself so hopeful as Dr. Barker, Letitia sanctioned more or less the satisfaction of the household, and spent the afternoon in a legitimate way. She was frightfully pale, and complained of a headache, which she partly attributed to fatigue and partly to the sun. Yet she saw one or two people who called, and explained Mar’s condition to them: “presumably so much better,” she said, “but I fear, I fear the doctor takes too sanguine a view. A week hence, if all is well—— But,” she said, “the strain of suspense is terrible, almost worse than anything that is certain.” There were people who saw her that day who declared afterwards that they could not understand why it was said of Mrs. Parke that she had no heart. Why, if ever there was a woman who felt deeply, it was Mrs. Parke. The suspense about her poor nephew and his long illness had worn her to a shadow; it had nearly killed her—especially as, poor thing, she was not one who took a cheerful view.
Letitia paid several visits in the evening to the sick room, or to the ante-room connected with it, after the night nurse had begun her duty. The other attendant was not in sympathy with the mistress of the house: but she stood with the night nurse at the door of the room and peered at Mar, and they mutually shook their heads and gave each other meaning looks. “I wish I could see him with Nurse Robinson’s eyes,” the attendant said, and Mrs. Parke replied with a sigh that she hoped most earnestly the doctor was not mistaken. “For I see no difference, nurse.” “And neither do I, ma’am,” said the gloomy woman. She paused for a moment, and then she added in a whisper, “I’ve no business to interfere, but I can’t bear to see you looking so pale. I do wish, Mrs. Parke, that you would go to bed.”
“I thought the same of you, nurse,” said Mrs. Parke, “indeed I wanted to offer to sit up half the night to let you have a little rest.”
“Thank you very much, but I must keep to my post,” the woman said.
“Then you must let me give you some of my cordial,” said Mrs. Parke. “I have an old mixture that has been in the family for a long time. You must take a little of it from my hand: it will strengthen you.” There was a little argument over this, all whispered at the door of Mar’s room, and at last the nurse consented. She was so touched that when Letitia came back carrying the drink, she ventured to give Mrs. Parke a timid kiss, and to say, “Dear lady, I wish you would go to bed yourself and get a good rest. It is almost more trying when one begins to hope, and you are frightfully pale.” Letitia took the kiss in very good part (for the nurse was a lady), and promised to go and rest. It was still early, the household not yet settled to the quiet of the night, and John had not come upstairs: so that there was nobody to note Letitia’s movements, who went and came through the half-lit corridor in a dark dressing-gown, and with a noiseless foot, stealing from her own room to that of the patient. She had made this little pilgrimage several times, when, listening in the ante-room, she heard at last the heavy regular breathing of the attendant in Mar’s room, which proved to her that what she intended had come to pass. Letitia paused for a moment outside the door. She was a little light woman, still slim, even thin, as in her younger days. She moved like a ghost, making no sound; but when she perceived that all was ready for her purpose, there was something that almost betrayed her, and that was the laboring, gasping breath of excitement, which it was all she could do to keep down. Her lungs, her heart, were so strained by the effort to be calm, that her hurried respiration came like the breath of a furnace, hot and interrupted. She stood holding on to the framework of the door, looking in from the comparative light of the room in which she stood to the shaded room in which Mar lay, with the light falling upon the table by his bedside, where were his drinks and medicines—and faintly upon the white pillow with the dark head sunk upon it, in a ghostly stillness. The nurse sat in an easy chair behind, out of the light, with her head fallen back, wrapped in sleep, breathing regularly and deep. Letitia stood and watched for a whole long minute, which might have been a year, peering with her white and ghastly face, like a visible spirit of evil. When she had a little subdued the panting of her heart she pushed the door noiselessly, and stole into the room. She kept her eyes upon the sleeping nurse, ready to draw back if she should move; but that was the only interruption Letitia feared. She had left the door open for her own safe retreat. It had not occurred to her that anyone could follow behind her. She went over to the bedside to the table on which the light fell. And then she stood still again for another terrible moment. Did her heart fail her, did any hand of grace hold her back? She might have done what she had to do three times over while she stood there with one hand upon her breast keeping down her panting breath. Then she put her right hand for a moment over the glass with the milk that stood ready, the drink for the sick boy. That was all. It was the affair of a moment. She might have done it in the nurse’s presence, and no one would have been the wiser. When she had done it she made a step backward, meaning to pass away as she had come. But instead of moving freely through the open air she came suddenly against something, some one, who stood behind, and who grasped without a word her clenched right hand. Letitia’s laboring heart leaped as if it would have burst out of her breast. There came from her a choked and horrible sound, not a cry, for she durst not cry. She kept her senses, her consciousness by a terrible effort. No! whoever it was, if it was John, her husband, if it was one of her children who had discovered her in this awful moment—whoever it was, she would not fall down there at Mar’s bedside like a murderer caught in the act. No! out of the room, at least, out of the scene—somewhere, where they might kill her if they pleased, but not there—not there!
He or she who had seized her from behind stretched a hand over her shoulder and took the milk from the table, and then the two figures in a strange, noiseless, mingling, half struggle, half accord, passed from the darkened room into the light, and looked in a horror, beyond words, into each other’s faces. And then all the forces of self control could no longer restrain the affrighted heart-stricken cry—“Mary!” which came from Letitia’s dry lips.
CHAPTER XLVII.
In the moment of that movement, half-dragged by the fast and firm hold upon her, half pushing her captor, and notwithstanding the horror and panic of her arrest and discovery, Letitia had time to form in her mind the explanations she would give to John, if it were John: or if it should happen to be Letty (which was impossible—but all things are possible to guilt and mortal terror—) the indignant superiority with which she would send her away. But when she twisted herself round and confronted in the light of the ante-room, which seemed a brilliant illumination after the dark chamber within, the face of Mary! Mary! Letitia’s strength collapsed, her self-command abandoned her, the gasping breath came in a hoarse rattle from her throat, her jaw fell, her eyes seemed to turn upon their orbits. She hung by the hand that held her half insensible, helpless, overwhelmed, like a bundle of clothes, as if she had no longer any sensation or impulse of her own. The only thing that kept her from falling was the grip upon her hand, and the support of the arm which Mary had put round her to reach it. She was stunned and stupefied, scarcely alive enough to be afraid, though there began to grow upon her mind by degrees a consciousness that this woman who held her had been mad—which even when she had full command of herself was what Letitia feared most in all the world. Mary was taller than her prisoner. She seemed taller now than ever she had done in her life, her eyes were shining like stars, her nostrils dilated with excitement and strong feeling, her color coming and going. She did not speak, but with her other hand held the milk to Letitia’s lips, always with her arm supporting her, as one might offer drink to a child. “Drink it,” she said at last, “drink it!” in a keen whisper that seemed to cut the silence like a knife. No mercy, no pity were in Mary’s eyes. She held Letitia’s wrist in a grip of iron, and pressing upon her, forcing her head back, held the glass to her lips, “drink it!—drink it!” The struggle was but a momentary one, and noiseless. They were like two shadows moving, swaying, forming but one in their speechless conflict. Then came the sudden crash of the shattered glass, as Letitia, recovering her forces in her desperation, with a sudden twist of her arm dashed it from her antagonist’s hand. The contents were spilled between them, and formed a white pool upon the floor, from which, instinctively, each woman drew back; and there they stood gazing at each other again.