“You’ll be ill yourself, mother, if you don’t mind.”
“And if I was!” she cried. “If they take him, what does it matter? and they’re sure to take him. Dick, it’s like taking the heart out of my bosom. But go, if you will go.”
“I must go, mother,” he said, sorrowfully. This passion was strange to him—hurt him even in spite of himself. Because Val was like his father! The depth of the passionate interest she had in him seemed so disproportionate to the cause.
But when Dick saw the doctor, he was more and more determined to go. The doctor told him that in another week the crisis of the fever might come—one week had passed without any change, and the sufferer was embarked upon the dark uncertain tideway of another, which might be prolonged into another still; but this no one could tell. “I thought your mother had let his friends know—she told me so,” he said. “They ought to be made aware of the state he is in,—they ought to be here before the week is out, when the crisis may come.”
“But you don’t think badly of him, doctor?” said Dick, with tears in his eyes. The mother had never asked so much, the doctor reflected; and he felt for the young man who felt so warmly, and was interested in the whole curious mysterious business, he could scarcely tell why.
“Your mother is a capital nurse,” he said, assuming a confidence he scarcely felt, “and please God, he’ll pull through.”
“Oh, thank you, doctor!” cried honest Dick, drying his eyes, and feeling, as do all simple souls, that it was the doctor who had done it, and that this vague assurance was very sure. He went to see Valentine after, who, he thought, gave him a kind of wan smile, and looked as if he knew him, which Dick interpreted, knowing nothing about it, to be a capital sign; and then he extorted from his mother directions for his journey. Reluctantly she told him where to go.
“Oh, Dick,” she said, “you’ll do it, whether I will or not—and there’s things will come of it that you don’t think of, and that I don’t want to think of; but don’t you name me, boy, nor let ’em know about me. Say your mother—I’m just your mother, that’s all. And if they come, I’ll not see ’em, Dick. No, I’m not going away; don’t look scared at me. I haven’t it in me now to go away.”
“Take care of yourself, mother,” he said; “don’t watch too long, nor neglect your food. I’ll not be long gone; and I’ll take care of you whoever comes; you needn’t be afraid.”
She shook her head, and followed him with mournful eyes. She did not know what she feared, nor what any one could do to her; but yet in her ignorance she was afraid. And Dick went away still more ignorant, determined to keep her secret, but feeling in his superior knowledge of the world that it was a secret which no one would care to penetrate. “Gentlemen” seldom try, he knew, to find out a woman thus abandoned, or to burden themselves with her, or any others that might belong to her. He smiled even at the idea. “They”—and Dick did not even know who they were—would think of Val only, he felt sure, and inquire no further. He was still more completely set at rest when he discovered that it was Val’s grandmother he was going to see—the old lady who had sent him a present when he was a boy, by Valentine’s hands. Dick somehow had no notion that this old lady was in any way connected with himself, even assuming, as he did, that his own divinations were true. She was a stranger, and he went quite calmly into her presence, not doubting anything that might befall him there.