Returning to the sick room, she found the patient in a better temper, evidently highly gratified at having expelled the doctor. Elinor thought this a good opportunity to urge her request for a small sum of money to procure medicines and other necessaries; but on this subject she found him inexorable.
"Give you money to buy poison!" he exclaimed. "Do you take me for a fool, or mad?"
"You are very ill, Marcus; you will die, without you follow Dr. Moore's advice."
"Don't flatter yourselves. I don't mean to die to please you. There is a great deal of vitality in me yet. Don't say another word. I will take nothing but cold water; I feel better already."
"Pray God that you may be right," said Elinor. But after this fit of rage, he fell into a stupor, and before night he was considerably worse. His unfortunate wife, worn down with watching and want of food and rest, now determined to have a regular search for the key of his strongbox, that she might procure him the medicines prescribed by the doctor, and purchase oatmeal and bread for the use of the parish girl and herself.
She carefully examined his pockets, his writing-desk, and bureau, but to no purpose—looking carefully into every drawer and chest that had not been sold by public auction or private contract. Not a corner of the chamber was left unexplored—not a closet or shelf escaped her strict examination, until, giving up the search as perfectly hopeless, she resumed her station at his bed-side, to watch through the long winter night—without a fire, and by the wan gleam that a miserable rush-light shed through the spacious and lofty room—the restless slumbers of the miser. She was ill, out of spirits, fatigued with her fruitless exertion, and deeply disappointed at her want of success.
The solitary light threw a ghastly livid hue on the strongly-marked features of the sleeper, rendered sharp and haggard by disease and his penurious habits; she could just distinguish through the gloom the spectre-like form of the invalid, and the long bony attenuated hands which grasped, from time to time, the curtains and bedclothes, as he tossed from side to side in his feverish unrest. Elinor continued to watch the dark and perturbed countenance of the sleeper, until he became an object of fear, and she fancied that it was some demon who had for a time usurped the human shape, and not the brother of Algernon—the man whom she had voluntarily attended to the altar, and in the presence of Almighty God had sworn to love, honor, and obey, and to cherish in sickness and in health.
A crushing sense of all the deception that had been practiced upon her, of her past wrongs and present misery, made her heart die within her, and her whole soul overflow with bitterness. She wrung her hands, and smote her breast in an agony of despair; but in that dark hour no tear relieved her burning brain, or moistened her eyes. She had once been under the dominion of insanity; she felt that her reason in that moment hung upon a thread; that, if she pursued much longer her present thoughts, they would drive her mad; that, if she continued to gaze much longer on the face of her husband, she would be tempted to plunge a knife, which lay on the table near her, into his breast. With a desperate effort she drew her eyes from the sleeper, and turned from the bed. Her gaze fell upon a large full-length picture in oils, which hung opposite. It was the portrait of one of Mark's ancestors, a young man who had fallen in his first battle, on the memorable field of Flodden. It bore a strong resemblance to Algernon, and Elinor prized it on that account, and would sit for hours with her head resting upon her hand, and her eyes riveted on this picture. This night it seemed to regard her with a sad and mournful aspect; and the large blue eyes appeared to return her fixed gaze with the sorrowful earnestness of life.
"My head is strangely confused," she murmured, half aloud. "Into what new extravagance will my treacherous fancy hurry me to-night? Ah me! physical wants and mental suffering, added to this long watching, will turn my brain."
She buried her face in her hands, and endeavored to shut out the grotesque and phantom-like forms that seemed to dance before her. A deathlike stillness reigned through the house, the silence alone broken by the ticking of the great dial at the head of the staircase. There is something inexpressibly awful in the ticking of a clock, when heard at midnight by the lonely and anxious watcher beside the bed of death. It is the voice of time marking its slow but certain progress towards eternity, and warning us in solemn tones that it will soon cease to number the hours for the sufferer for ever. Elinor trembled as she listened to the low monotonous measured sounds; and she felt at that moment a presentiment that her own weary pilgrimage on earth was drawing to a close.