Suddenly there were voices heard coming up the stairs, approaching the room, a faint little wail from the baby, a soothing hush-sh from the nurse who carried him. And then another voice—not loud, not ungentle, the voice of a woman trying to ingratiate herself with someone who accompanied her. Mary had started at the sound of the infant’s cry, but when she heard the other voice she rose up in her bed and put out a terrified hand on each side to her nurse and to Agnes. An anguished look of listening came into her face. She clutched their hands, drawing them in close to her, her eyes staring like those of a hunted creature straight before her, as if prepared to rise and flee. Then Letitia’s voice became audible again, “I will just go in. It will rouse her to see me.” Both the watchers heard these words distinctly, though they would have sworn that the wild shriek which ran through the house burst from Mary’s lips before they were half said. Mary flung herself first on one then on the other with cries that succeeded each other wildly, then she threw herself back into her bed, pulling the coverings over head. “Save me! save me!” she cried, “Oh, save me, save me!” The force of her hold was such that the women on either side were forced upon the bed, their heads meeting across her concealed and covered head, from which shrieks muffled but terrible still continued to come. “For God’s sake, don’t bring her in, don’t bring her in,” cried Agnes, almost as wildly. The group outside paused terrified; Letitia was livid with fear. She turned back hastily, as if the mad creature who feared her was at her heels, and without saying a word ran downstairs. She had courage enough on ordinary occasions, but to be within reach of a madwoman, which was the unmitigated phrase she used to herself, was not one of the dangers which she could face. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her down the long staircase. No plea for Mary did Mrs. Parke make. Through the ringing of those shrieks, which became more and more hoarse as the unfortunate patient wore herself out, all the bystanders heard the patter of quick little steps running downstairs. She darted out at the open door, and ran along the terrace outside, a self-condemned fugitive: or was she only a nervous woman, terrified, as some people are, of anything that sounds like insanity? The unhappy family heard in their imaginations Letitia’s steps running through everything all the dreadful hours that followed. But the fact was that she ran in her panic to where she had left her cab, never drawing her breath, and got into it and drove quickly away. For one thing she had found out all she wanted to know.
What followed on that dreadful day no one ever knew clearly. Poor Mary, out of her brooding and miserable madness, which yet everybody hoped might in time have dispersed, as the shock and horror that produced it died away from her brain, became for a time acutely, terribly mad, striving to hide herself from the light of day, haunted by a horror of her enemy, who was forever pursuing her, ready to clutch at her at the door. Her confused brain caught this one point of reality and never relinquished it. Letitia was always at the door to Mary’s terrified and distorted fancy. Her voice was always there, saying, “I will go in.” Every time the door opened there was a fresh access of the wildest terror, which lasted through days and nights, so dreadful to the watchers, that they could not tell how long it lasted or how often the long day ended in a night full of alarm and terror. Poor old Lord Frogmore—such a picture of an old gentleman; so active, so brisk, so well, doing everything that younger men could do—fell into pathetic ruin, lost his color, his strength, his spirits, and became an old man in that week of misery. The old vicar from Grocombe and his wife, who came hurrying to the Park, with the idea that the near relations should always be collected on such an emergency, added to the trouble by their unnecessary presence; for Mrs. Hill, who was not to be kept out of her daughter’s room, had to be removed from it periodically in a state of utter prostration, from which it required all the care of Agnes to restore her; and the vicar himself stood about in the hall or the library staring at everybody who went and came; asking in a hoarse whisper, “Is she any better?” and always in the way.
When this terrible state of affairs had lasted for a week, and everyone was worn out, the doctors—for they were now many, Lord Frogmore having summoned everyone who could be supposed to be of any help—requested an interview with him; and then announced their opinion that Lady Frogmore should be removed from home. Having thus to renounce the hopes he had still been cherishing against hope that her illness might still prove only temporary, the old lord struggled for some time against the dreadful necessity. He declared that he was ready to fill the house with attendants; to undergo any expense; to give up his house entirely to his wife and go away himself if they considered it necessary. But by and by calmer counsels prevailed. Mary’s family were more reasonable than her husband. They pointed out to him with much practical sense that he was risking his own health, destroying his own life, without any advantage to her, and that his life was more than ever valuable, for his child’s sake, and even for her sake, poor forlorn lady, who had no protector but he. It was hard for him in his weakened state to stand out against the doctors, against the dull persistency of the vicar, who besides could not be got rid of till poor Mary was removed, and against what was more than all, the dreadful sight of Mary convulsed with frenzy, or lying in her calm intervals like a dead thing, her mild face grown into a tragic mask of misery. On the whole it was better not to see that, to have the knowledge of it without having one’s heart rent every day by the dreadful, dreadful sight. Lord Frogmore at last consented to this miserable yet inevitable step, which he felt to be a public proclamation of the wretchedness which had so soon closed over the late and tranquil happiness of his old age. He went away for a few days with Rogers, as sad an old man as any under the stars, and gave himself up meekly into his faithful servant’s hands, to be brought back to life as far as was possible. “Yes,” he said, “Rogers, do what you can for me: for I have my little boy to look after, my poor little baby that ought to have been my grandchild, Rogers.”
“Don’t say so, my lord. Oh, don’t say so. He’ll grow up to be a comfort to you.”
The old lord shook his head with a melancholy smile. “He’s cost me dear, he’s cost me very dear, and he’s a delicate little mite with no stamina, an old man’s child. Poor little beggar that has cost his mother her reason! it would be the best thing for him, Rogers, to die comfortably and be buried with her when I go.”
“Oh, my lord! please God you’ll live to see him come of age, and my lady as bright as ever, and all well.”
Lord Frogmore gave a deep sigh, and then a little laugh, which was perhaps the saddest of the two. “Well,” he said, “let’s hope so, Rogers, since nobody can tell how it may be.”
He could not help wondering sometimes what he had done that this should have fallen upon him in his old age, or if he had done anything, or if God worked no miracles now save in sustaining and supporting the human spirit to bear, but let the laws of nature take their course. It was Mary’s nature, he felt, to be thus driven frantic by the thought of having wronged another for her own happiness, and in his sad musings he followed all the course of the story which he himself, without perhaps sufficient motive, had set in motion. He said to himself that perhaps after permitting John to believe himself to be the heir for so long, it was wrong on his part to have put himself in the position of supplanting John. He thought of his first visit to Greenpark, and wondered whether he had been so petty as to be nettled by little Duke’s baby swagger. He had been nettled by it. “When you are dead, papa, and when papa is dead, me——.” The child had cleared both John and himself out of his little path with such ease as if it did not matter! He had been vexed—he a man who ought to have known better—by what the child had said: and was it possible that a little prick of offence like this should have originated all that followed? And then he thought of Mary, his Mary, so patient and sweet, putting up with everything, and with the insolence of the servants, from which he had delivered her. No, no, he could not think he had been anything but right in interfering to save Mary, to raise her above all her tormentors. He had been certainly right to do that—certainly right! But had it been better for her that he did so? Would not even Letitia’s dependent, simply loving and serving Letitia’s children, humble enough and poor enough, but reaping the fruits of patience in a gentle life, which was all sacrifice—would not she have been happier like that without rising to triumph (which was out of accordance with her nature) for a time, to be plunged afterwards into such horrible depths. Poor Lord Frogmore, when he had sounded all these depths, was obliged at the end to come back, and to acknowledge that he knew nothing—nothing! Perhaps he had not even done all round what he hoped would be for the best, being moved by wrath against little Duke and pity for Mary beyond what was reasonable, and so having set all those dreadful agencies in motion which could not be balked, which must proceed to their natural end. He lost himself in the metaphysics of this question which was so difficult to fathom. For his brother John and his brother’s family had a perfect right to think themselves the heirs, and it was hard, very hard upon them to be displaced. And at the same time he himself had a perfect right to marry, and have an heir of his own. Who can decide such questions? and yet one way or another there must have been a harvest of trouble and pain.
When Lord Frogmore returned to the park, Mary was gone. She was gone and all trace of her, except the poor little delicate baby, the puny thing which had no stamina and which everybody thought would die. Poor little thing, people said, it would be a comfort if it was to die, for it never could have any health to make life pleasant, and madness in the mother’s family and the father so old, so that it was not possible he could live to see it grow up. Everybody allowed that it was a most pathetic thing to see the old lord walking in the avenue through all the winter mornings up and down, up and down in the sunshine, beside the bundle of white cashmere which contained this little weakly bud of humanity, the little thing who had not even the honors of his sex, but was called “it” by all who spoke of him. It was a very still little thing, rarely cried, but often when the veil was drawn aside from its face was seen to be gazing up at the heavens with two solemn brown eyes. Kind women cried when they saw this forlorn little creature, worse than motherless, looking up “to where it had come from,” some said—“to where it was going fast,” said the others. According as they were of hopeful dispositions or not people took these different views; but all thought it was a most pathetic thing to see old Lord Frogmore taking these silent walks along with his heir.
After a time, when it was seen that difficulties were apt to arise with the child’s attendants, some of whom were too kind to him, and some not kind enough, Agnes Hill left Grocombe and came to live at the Park. It was not concealed that she came chiefly to act as head nurse to the boy. But Agnes did not interfere with the father’s supervision of his child, nor with their walks, for if she were not so emotional or so interesting as her sister Mary, she was very sensible and capable of letting well alone, which is a thing that few persons can do in a masterly way, and women especially are often deficient in. And thus life went on for five or six years. Five or six years! A frightful time, if you will think of it, for a poor woman to be shut up in an asylum, and to know nothing of the fate of her nearest and dearest. To be sure she was visited periodically, and sometimes knew her friends, and would ask them questions which showed she remembered. But, however long the years may be they come only day by day, and this makes them so much more easy to get through—and human nature is the strangest thing, falling into any routine, adapting itself to all circumstances.