CHAPTER LXXV.
SOMETHING LIKE A LEGACY.
A grand physician being called from London, pronounced that Sir Roland’s case was one of asthenic apoplexy, rather than of pure paralysis. He gave the proper directions, praised the local practitioners, hoped for the best, took his fifty guineas with promptitude, and departed. If there were any weight on the mind, it must be cast aside at once, as soon as the mind should have sense of it. For this a little effort might be allowed, “such as the making of a will, or so forth, or good-bye to children; for on the first return of sense, some activity was good for it. But after that, repose, dear sir, insist on repose, and nourishing food. No phlebotomy—no, that is quite a mistake; an anachronism, a barbarism, in such a case as this is. It is anæmia, with our poor friend, and vascular inaction. No arterial plethorism; quite the opposite, in fact. You have perfectly diagnosed the case. How it will end I cannot say, any more than you can.”
One more there was, one miserable heart, perpetually vexed and torn, that could not tell how things would end, if even they ended anyhow. Alice Lorraine could not be kept from going to her father’s bed, and she was not strong enough yet to bear the sight of the wreck before her.
“It is my doing—my doing!” she cried; “oh, what a wicked thing I must have done, to be punished so bitterly as this!”
“If you please, Miss, to go away with your excitement,” said the old nurse, who was watching him. “You promised to behave yourself; and this is how you does it! Us never can tell what they hears, or what they don’t; when they lies with their ears pricked up so.”
“Nurse, I will go away,” said Alice; “I always do more harm than good.”
The only comfort she now could get flowed from the warm bright heart of Mabel. Everybody else gave signs of being a little, or much, afraid of her. And what is more dreadful for any kind heart, than for other hearts to dread it? She knew that she had done a desperate thing; and she felt that everybody had good reason for shrinking away from her large deep eyes. She tried to keep up her courage, in spite of all that was whispered about her; and, truly speaking, her whole heart vested in her father and her brother.
Mabel watched the whole of this, and did her best to help it. But sweet and good girl as she was, and in her way very noble, she belonged to a stratum of womanhood distinct from that of Alice. She would never have jumped into the river. She would simply have defied them to take her to church. She would have cried, “Here I am, and I won’t marry any man, unless I love him. I don’t love this man; and I won’t have him. Now do your worst, every one of you.” A sensible way of regarding the thing, except for the need of the money.
On the third day, Sir Roland moved his eyes, and feebly raised one elbow. Alice sat there at his side, as now she was almost always sitting. “Oh father,” she cried, “if you would only give me one little sign that you know me. Just to move your darling hand, or just to give me one little glance. Or, if I have no right to that——”
“Go away, Miss; leave the room, if you please. My orders was very particular to have nobody near him, when he first begins to take notice to anything.”