The Heir Presumptive and the Heir Apparent

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.

Letitia’s every nerve was trembling with terror, physical fear surmounting the first panic of discovery, which was a terror of the mind. She expected every moment an accès of madness, in which she might be torn limb from limb—though at the same time calculating that the mad woman might loose her hold, and there might be a possibility of desperate flight, and of all the household on her side protecting her, and sudden relief from every terror. The nature of the emergency brought back to her after the first speechless horror her power of thought and calculation. She kept her eyes upon Mary’s eyes, still wild with fright, but awakened to a vigilant watch and keen attention to every indication of the other’s looks. But this was not the Mary whom Letitia had ever seen before. Her face had cleared like a sky after rain. It was like that sky ethereally pale, exalted, with a transparence that seemed to come from some light beyond. Mary was no longer a weak woman distracted by over tenderness, by visionary compunctions, humbleness, uncertainty—but clear and strong, with the quivering, expanding nostrils, the wide open eyes and trembling lips of inspiration. She held her captive still, though she stood a little apart from her, grasping fast in her own Letitia’s shut hand.

“What did you put in it,” she said, “to kill my boy?”

“Mary!” Letitia panted. “Why do you try to frighten me?—your boy?—you have told me you had no boy——”

“That you tried to kill—before he was born—that you drove out of my knowledge—for I was mad. I know it all now—and you did it; what did you put in that to kill my boy?”

There came a shriek from Letitia’s laboring breast. The words maddened her again into frantic terror. She made a wild effort to free her hand. Though it was a shriek, and intense as the loudest outcry, it was subdued by the other terror of being heard and discovered. Between the two she hung suspended, not able altogether to coerce nature, but still keeping its expression under.

“Mary,” she cried, “let me go—let me go!”

“What was it you put in it to kill him?”

“Mary! Let me go—let me go!”

“Not till you tell me; and then you shall go—where you will; away from here—away from my boy.”

They were women not used to any such struggle, and feeling in the depths of their hearts that to struggle so for any reason was a shame to them; and every moment as it passed brought this consciousness more near to Mary, who in the first shock was capable of anything. Perhaps her hold loosened, perhaps Letitia felt the magnetic effect of that relaxation even before it was palpable. All at once she flung out her arm which Mary held, and threw something which was in it into the dull small fire which smouldered in the grate, and which was kept there, notwithstanding the warmth of the July nights, for the uses of the sick room. There was a faint clang of glass against the bars, and then the two figures separated altogether and stood apart, still gazing at each other with panting breath.

Letitia had felt that if she ever got free from the grasp that held her—if ever she could throw off the hand that was like velvet yet closed on her like iron, there was but one thing to do, to fly, to get help, to make everybody understand that Lady Frogmore, mad as she had once been before, had burst in on her and tried to kill her. But now that she had freed herself she did not take to flight as she intended. She drew away a step nearer the door, that she might retain that alternative—and kept the most watchful eye upon her antagonist, ready in a moment to fly. But she did not do so. Her breath began to come more easily. Perhaps she was relieved that the attempt had failed—which at once relaxed the tragic tension of her nerves; at all events her heart gave a leap of satisfaction that there was no proof against her. The milk spilt on the floor had soaked into the carpet—the vial was fused into liquid metal, which could betray no one, in the fire. She had gone through a terrible moment but it was over. She fell back upon the wall and supported herself against it, propping up the shoulders which still heaved with the storm that was passed—and then she said in something like her usual voice—

“What is this all about, Lady Frogmore?”

Mary had grown restless like Letitia. The first impulse of passion and excitement failed in her, it was so unusual to her gentle bosom. She looked at this woman who stood defiant, staring at her, with a look of wonder and doubt. “If I have done you any wrong—” she began with a quaver in her voice; and then paused. “You know,” she began again, “that I have not done you wrong. You stole into the room in the dark, you put something in his drink. Oh,” cried Mary, clasping her hands, “if I had not come at that moment, if God had not sent me, my boy might have been murdered. How dare you stand and face me there? Go, go!” She stamped her foot upon the floor. “Go! Don’t come near my child again.”

“Your child,” Letitia said, with a smile of scorn. “You who never had one! You have said so a hundred times.”

Mary’s lips opened as if to reply—then she paused. “Who am I to be angry!” she said. “I have given her cause to speak. Oh, go,” she cried, “go. I will not accuse you. You know what you have done, and I know, and that will separate us for ever and ever. No one, no one shall come near my child to harm him again, for his mother will be there. Go, you wicked woman, go.”

“You are mad,” cried Letitia, “who would believe a mad woman? Say what you please, do you think anyone will listen to you! You are mad, mad! I’ll have you put in an asylum. I’ll have you shut up. I’ll—Oh, save me from her, she’s mad, she’s mad!” cried Letitia, with a shriek. There was someone coming—and Mary had put forth her hands as if to seize her again. Letitia ran past her to the door, and there stood for a moment panting, vindictive. “Do you think they will leave him with a mad woman?” she cried, then gave another shriek and fled; for it was not John as she thought who was coming to protect her but another cloaked figure like a repetition of Mary’s, who appeared on the other side. She did not stop for further parley, but ran wildly, with the precipitation of terror, into the long, silent, dim corridor.

“What has happened? What is it?” said Agnes, terrified, going up to her sister who stood with clasped hands in the middle of the room, the light falling upon her face. Mary put her arms round her, giving her a close momentary embrace, which was half joy to see some one come who would stand by her, and half an instinctive motion to support herself and derive strength from her sister’s touch.

“I came in time,” she said. “I saved him. He is safe. I will never leave my child again. Oh never while she is here——”

“What is it? What is it, Mary?”

Mary told her story, leaning upon her sister, holding her fast, whispering in her ear. Even Letitia’s cries and vituperations had been subdued, whispers of passion and desperation, no more. But to Agnes it seemed an incredible tale, a vision of the still confused and wandering brain. She soothed Mary, patting her shoulder with a trembling hand saying, “No, no. You must have dreamt it. No, no, my dear: oh, that was not the danger,” in a troubled voice. Mary detached herself from her sister, putting Agnes away gently, but with decision. She took off the bonnet which she had worn all this time, and tied the veil which had dropped from it over her head. Then she went into the inner room without a word. To pass into that silent and darkened room out of the agitation of the other was like going into another world. The breathing of the nurse in her deep sleep filled it with a faint regular sound. The patient did not stir. Mary sat down at the foot of the bed, like a shadow. Her figure in its dark dress seemed to be absorbed in the dimness and pass out of sight altogether. Agnes stood at the door and looked into the chamber full of sleep and silence, weighed down by the mystery about her. Had that fantastic, horrible scene really happened, or had it been but a dream? There were still traces on the carpet of something white that had soaked into it, and her foot had crushed a portion of the broken glass upon the floor. Was it true? Was it possible it could be true? She stood wondering on the verge of the stillness that closed over the sick room in which her sister had disappeared and been swallowed up. It is strange at any time to look into a chamber thus occupied. The feeble patient in the bed noiseless in the slumber of weakness, the watcher by his side invisible in the gloom, a point of wakeful, anxious life among those shadows. The nurse sleeping heavily in the background, invisible, added another aching circumstance to the mystery—nurses of that class do not sleep so. Was it true? Could it be true?

She was called back to the common passage of affairs by a faint knock at the door of the ante-room, and going to it found Ford, conducted by a sleepy maid who had been roused to prepare Lady Frogmore’s room. “Where is my lady, Miss Hill?” said the anxious Ford. “I can’t find my lady. It’s late and she’s tired, and I must get her to bed.”

“No, Ford; she will not leave her son to-night.”

“Oh, Miss Hill, her son! She will die of it, or she will go wrong again, and what will everybody say to me for allowing this? She must come to bed. She must come to bed!”

“No one can make her do so, Ford—the nurse has gone to sleep, someone is wanted here. I will stay by her, and if I can get her to go to bed I will.”

“You will both kill yourselves,” cried Ford aggrieved, “and what will be the advantage in that? You may, if you please, Miss Hill, I have no authority; but my lady, my lady! It is as much as her life is worth.”

Agnes bade the maid bring her some shawls, and lie down herself. She went softly into the sick room and put a wrap round Mary’s shoulders, who raised her pale face, just visible through the dark in its whiteness, to kiss her in token of thanks. Agnes permitted her hungry heart an anxious look at the patient and satisfied herself, to the relief of various awful doubts that had been growing on her that he breathed softly and regularly, though almost inaudibly. She endeavored in vain to rouse the sleeping woman behind, and then she herself retired into the ante-room. Was it true? Could it be possible? As she sat there, realizing the extraordinary way in which Mary and she had been allowed to come in and take possession, when she perceived that no one came near them, that Letitia did not return, did not even send a servant, but gave up the patient and the charge of him without a word, without the slightest notice of their possible wants, or care for them, a sense of the strangeness of it all grew upon her. Could Mary’s tale be true? Oh, God, could it be true? The woman sleeping so deeply, not to be roused—the house fallen into complete silence as if everyone had gone to bed. Mary and she, as it seemed, the only two waking in all the place. Could it be true? Could it be true?

An hour or two later the scene had changed, the sick room was faintly illuminated through the closed curtains with the light of the morning. And Agnes, looking in, through the half open doorway, met Mary’s look, her face like the clear, pale morning, a sort of ecstasy in her wakeful eyes. She did not seem to have moved since Agnes threw the shawl round her, nor had she closed those widely-opened eyes. When she had given her sister that look they returned to the bed where Mar’s young wasted countenance was now dimly visible. There was almost a chill in that blue dawning of the new day; a something clear and keen above illusion, the light of reality, yet the light of a vision. As Agnes looked, everything returned to its immovable stillness again. The pale boy sleeping, the pale mother watching, the nurse behind come into sight with her head thrown back, a potent witness in her insensibility. Was it true? Could it be true?

CHAPTER XLVIII.

John Parke woke next morning to see his wife in her dressing gown, moving vaguely about the room, a shadow against the full summer light that came in at all the windows. He could not make out at first what she was doing, prowling about in a curious monotonous round from window to window, pausing to look out, as it seemed, at the edge of the blind, first of one, then of another. He watched her for a little while in vague alarm. During all this time a vague but painful suspicion was in John’s mind. He knew better than anyone how she had looked forward to a new state of affairs. Had she not drawn even him to that vile anticipation to plan and calculate upon the boy’s death? The pain of the thought that he had done so made more intense his sense of the terrible revulsion in her mind when all these horrible hopes came to an end. He was not a man who naturally divined what was going on in the minds of others, but the movement in his own, on this occasion, and the instinctive knowledge which long years of companionship had vaguely, magnetically conveyed to him about his wife—not a matter of reflection or reason, but simply of impression—kept a dull light about Letitia which surrounded no other person upon earth. Something like sympathy mingled with and increased his power of comprehending during this dreadful crisis. How would she make up her mind to it, he asked himself, notwithstanding the horror and shame with which he thought of the calculations he himself had been seduced into sharing. He knew very well how little she liked to be foiled, how she struggled against disappointment, and got her will in defiance of every combination of circumstances. During all the previous day he had been very uneasy, certain that in her long absence she was planning something, wondering what she could plan that would have any effect upon the present state of affairs—fearing—he knew not what. John could not allow himself to think that his wife would contemplate harming the boy. Oh, no, no! such a thought was not in his mind. Letitia had her faults. She had never been kind to Mar. She had thought of him as an interloper, as an intruder, as supplanting Duke—and she had not concealed her feeling. But harm him—by so much as a touch. Oh, no! no! Nevertheless, John had been very uneasy all day, and even in his sleep this gnawing discomfort had not left him. He had dreamed of deathbeds and dying persons, and of strange scenes of chaos in which she was always present, though he knew not for what purpose. And when he woke suddenly and saw her wandering about the room in the high clear morning light like a ghost, all the uneasiness of the previous day, all the troubled dreams of the night came back upon his heart. He watched her for a minute without making any sign, and then he called “Letitia!” His voice made her start violently—but she came towards him at once, wrapping her dressing-gown round her as though she felt cold.

“Isn’t it very early? Why are you prowling about at this hour?”

“Yes, I suppose it’s early. I couldn’t sleep—one cannot always sleep when one would.”

“You are not such a bad sleeper as you think,” said John—as have said before him, in the calm of experience, the partners of many a restless wife and husband. “And I wish,” he added impatiently, “that you’d let me sleep, at least.”

Instead of quenching him by a sharp word, as was Letitia’s wont, she came towards the bedside and sat down, turning her back to the light. “John,” she said, “there has been a great deal happening while you have been asleep.”

“What?” he cried. He raised himself up on his elbow, terrified, threatening. “Letitia, for God’s sake, don’t tell me that anything has happened to the boy.”

“Oh, the boy!” she cried, with an impatience that was balm to his heart. Then she went on, not looking at him, “Fancy, who arrived last night—Mary, looking for her child——”

“Lady Frogmore!”

“Mary—and calling for her child—she who always denied that she ever had one. She came flying upon me in his room, and seized hold of me and dragged me out of it; mad—mad—as mad again—as—as a March hare.” Her lips parted in a harsh laugh. “I believe she would have torn me to pieces if I had not taken to my heels. You know there is nothing in the world I am so frightened of as madness—nothing! I took to my heels——”

“Wait a bit,” said John, “wait, I don’t understand. She came in the middle of the night to see her child?”

“Agnes must have put her up to it. Agnes must have got it into her head at last that she had a child.”

“And you were in his room? What were you doing in his room, Letitia? You have never nursed him. You were asleep when I came upstairs.”

She gave him a momentary glance—half of defiance, half of alarm—and yet she had thought of this, too. “I fancied the nurse looked sleepy—the night nurse, you know, John—I thought she looked drowsy, and I stole back to listen. Well, I did, for she was asleep. I went into see that all was right for the night—his drink——”

Even Letitia’s nerve was not enough for this. She shivered. “It is cold at this hour in the morning,” she said, her teeth chattering.

“Did you give him anything to drink?” John would not have dared to confess to himself what dread apprehension went through his heart. And it was dreadful for him to talk of it, though she was so wonderful in self-command.

“I?—oh, no. I gave him nothing. I have not nursed him, you know. I saw that all was there that he could want, and was going to rouse the nurse, when somebody came upon me and took me by the shoulders. At first I thought it was you.”

“Why should you think that I would take you by the shoulders?” His suspicion was not quenched, but seized upon every word.

“Yes,” she said, “why should I? I thought, perhaps, you were angry with me for being there at all.”

“Why should I be angry with you,” he asked again, “for being there?” never taking his eyes from her face.

On her part she never looked towards him, but continued impatiently, “I don’t suppose I thought of the whys and the wherefores. I thought it was you, that was all. And when I found it was Mary—I don’t know whether she dragged me out or I pushed her out. Above all I feared a noise to wake the boy.”

John gave her a long searching look. He did not want to find her out. He wanted her to clear herself from all suspicions, from all doubt. “Ah, the boy!” he said, with a long-drawn breath, “the poor boy! Did you wake him? It might have been as much as his life was worth.”

“You think of nothing else,” she said. Then with a sort of indulgence to his weakness, “Your boy never stirred.” She breathed forth heavily a sigh—was it of thankfulness?

“I suppose he was sleeping,” she added, with a sort of bravado, “I did not look.”

“Good God!” cried John, springing up, “was there any doubt? Had you any doubt?” He seized his dressing-gown and thrust his arms into the sleeves, and his feet into slippers.

“Aye,” cried Letitia, still without a movement, without even looking at him, “go and see. Nothing would make me face that woman again.”

She sat idly playing with a ring upon her finger, turning it round and round, but neither raised her head nor looked at him, though he paused before her with again the searching look of anxiety which he dared not define.

“Letitia,” he said, “for God’s sake what do you mean? There is something in all this I don’t understand.”

“Ah, don’t I speak plain enough?” she said. “It’s Mary come back, and as mad as a March hare.”

“And you left her—a woman—in that state—alone with the boy, just out of the jaws of death? What’s that on your gown?”

She looked at it, bending forward to see—a long streak as of something spilt. The stain was stiff, giving a rigid line to the stuff—and what John suspected, feared it to be, cannot be put into words. His eyes grew wild with terror, and his voice hoarse, as he repeated:—

“On your gown? What is it? What is it?”

“Oh, the milk!” Letitia said. It brought everything before her, and a shiver ran over her again; but also a laugh, which, though tuneless enough, gave the distracted man by her side some comfort, for she could not have laughed surely if it had been——“We spilt it between us,” Letitia said, “and mad as she was she drew back for that, not to spoil her dress. She had her senses enough for that.”

He stood in front of her for a moment, undecided what to do, when she suddenly raised her head and cried sharply, “John, why don’t you go and see?”

“I can’t understand you,” he said. “You mean more than I know.”

She looked up at him again and laughed in a way that froze his blood. “Don’t I always?” she said, with a tone of contempt. Then added, stamping on the floor, “Go—go and see what has happened. I will never see that woman again.”

John went softly along the corridor, half dressed, ashamed, miserable. Something had happened more than he could understand, perhaps more than he would ever understand. The house was all silent, wrapt as in a garment in the morning sunshine, which came in by the great staircase windows and flooded everything. It was still very early. His step made a sound which ran all through and through it. He could not be noiseless as the women were, who stole about, and met, and had their encounters, and nobody was ever the wiser. He thought it was in the middle of the night that this arrival must have occurred which seemed to him like a dream, and which as he passed through the sleeping house and felt the stillness of it he began to think must be but some wild fancy of his wife’s, something which could not be true. When he pushed open the door of the ante-room a dark figure rose hurriedly out of a chair, and met him with the dazed look of a person disturbed and half asleep. “Miss Hill!” he cried. Then it was true!

She put up her hand and said “Hush.” Then, after a moment, “He is asleep, like a baby; he has never stirred.”

“Are you sure—that he is asleep?”

“Oh, I thought that myself,” she cried, understanding him. “He was so quiet. Yes, yes, he is asleep; breathing faintly, but you can hear him. Oh, safe and sound asleep!”

“My wife told me—his mother——”

“She is there,” said Agnes, beckoning him to the door of the inner room. He stood and looked in for a moment, with his clouded and troubled face, leaning against the lintel. Mary’s ear had been caught by the sound. She looked up and met his eyes with that ethereal clearness of countenance, the exaltation of her aroused and awakened soul. She looked him in the face with a mild serenity and peace and smiled in recognition, then turned her eyes to the bed as if to show him the boy softly sleeping there. Behind, the nurse still slept in the easy chair. To John it seemed as if it were all a dream, of which there was no explanation. How did it come about that the sick room had passed into the keeping of these two, arriving mysteriously during the night, whom his wife must have risen from his side to receive, of whom he had heard nothing? The nurse asleep, all the usual faces gone, the mother who had disowned him sitting in that attitude of love by Mar’s side—what did it all mean?

“This is all very strange,” he said, drawing back from the door. “I find you here in possession whom I thought far away—and the mother who was so estranged. Did you come down from the skies? Is it safe to leave her there? Is she——”

Agnes looked at the man who was comparatively little known to her, who was a man, frightening and disturbing in his strange undress in the midst of the silent house. She was an elderly single woman, unaccustomed to give any account of herself to strange men, and her weariness and all the unusual circumstances told upon her. Her lips quivered and her eyes filled. “Oh,” she said, “Mr. Parke, do not think we meant any—any reproach. Things have happened that have brought my sister to her full senses—and to remember everything. I could not keep her from her boy—you would not keep her from her boy——”

“Not if she is sane; not if it is safe,” said John. He looked in again through the half closed door. Once more Mary’s keen ear caught the sound; and again she turned towards him her face, which was like the morning sky. She had never been beautiful in her best and youngest days. Now with her grey hair ruffled by the night’s vigil, her mild eyes cleared from any film that had been upon them, lambent and inspired with watchful love, her look overawed the anxious spectator. He stepped back again with a sort of apologetic humility. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “You seem to have some meaning among you that I don’t know: but I cannot be the one to disturb her. I hope—I hope that I am making no mistake——”

“You are making no mistake, Mr. Parke,” said Agnes. “Mar was my child more than hers; he was my baby. My heart was nearly broken, for I thought he was dying when I came here last night. But I trust him in his mother’s hands. I give place to her because it is her right. Do you think I would leave my boy to her if she were not in her full senses, ready to defend him, ready to protect him——?”

She stopped, choked with the sobs, which, in her great exhaustion and emotion, Agnes could no longer entirely keep down.

“To defend him—to protect him? From what? from what?” John said.

“Oh, how can I tell? From the perils and dangers of the night; from carelessness and any ill wish.”

John’s voice was choked as that of Agnes’ had been. “There is no ill wish,” he said—“none—to Mar in this house.”

He saw, as he spoke, the traces on the floor of something spilt like that on his wife’s gown—and some fragments of the broken glass which had escaped Agnes’ scrutiny. He did not know what they meant. He was not clever, nor had he any imagination to divine; but something went through him like a cold blast, chilling him to the heart. He paused a moment, staring at the floor, and the words died away on his lips.

When John returned to his wife’s room Letitia was in bed, and to all appearance fast asleep. The poor man was glad, if such a word could be applied to anything he was capable of feeling. He withdrew softly into his dressing-room, and sat there for a long time with his head in his hands and his face hidden. What to think of the mysterious things that had passed that night he did not know.

CHAPTER XLIX.

She came up, closer and closer, and took his hand, and began to cry, clasping it within her own. “Why should that be? Why should that be?” she said.

“Because,” said Mar, groping with his faint, half awakened senses and intelligence still in the strangest maze, “because—you are here.”

“Do you know me?”

He did not answer, but in those large, humid eyes of weakness the answer was so plain. Know you! they seemed to say; what do I know but you? Mary was touched to the heart. She dropped upon her knees by the bedside, and began to kiss his hand over and over. “I am your mother,” she said, and went on repeating those words as if they were something which he would not believe. “I am your mother—I am your mother.” They were a wonder to her, but no wonder to Mar. He smiled with the heavenly light in his eyes which belong to all, more or less, who have come back from the gates of death; and specially to the children when they are so good, so good, as to come back. Was there ever any mother but was thankful, oh, beyond telling, to her child for coming back? He looked at her with that angelic superiority of the newly returned, saying nothing. What could he say? He had known it all his life, but had never said a word. He had thought of her, dreamed of her, longed for her, but never had said a word. Had he died it would have been without a sign of that paramount dream and longing. He had never had any sense of wrong, only of wistful wishes and a lingering, never-quenched, always visionary hope. When Mar had made up his mind, as he had done very early, many years before, that he would die, he had felt a consolation in his childish mind from the thought. God would surely let him attend upon her, be her guardian angel, though he was so little. And then when she should die too—ah then! she would not fail to know him. It was this old childish thought so long cherished that made him think he must have died when he saw his mother for the first time by his bedside. But he was shy to utter that sacred word. He had dreamt of it so much, breathing it to himself like a melody which he alone had the secret of, that the thought of saying it aloud filled him with a strange trouble. And that she should kiss his hand, she! whose hem of her dress he would have been glad to kiss, troubled him; but to ask her to kiss him and not his hand, was something too bold, too hazardous to think of. He could only look at her, as he might have looked at the moment he had so often thought of, when he took her hand to lead her out of life, her guardian angel, and she recognized him in the light of heaven.

“I am your mother,” she kept saying. “Do you know me, do you know me?” laying her cheek upon his hand, kissing every wasted finger. Mary did not wait for any answer, perhaps she did not want it. It was enough for her to make her statement clear to him, to show him who she was. She had no fear of his affection, nor any compunction as if for guilt of her own towards him. None of these things troubled her mind. She was as if she had come home from a long absence, which by the most innocent natural causes had kept her separate from her boy. This was the way in which it seemed to affect her. She was not aware that she had been in fault or required forgiveness—or that there was any special harm or misfortune in it. She had arrived in time. That was the conviction warm at her heart. She had come in time. Her boy had been in danger, and she had arrived in time to save him. Had there been any sense in her mind of guilt towards him it would all have been driven away by this happy thought. She had been not a moment too late, exactly in time. Had she arrived earlier she might never have known the risk he ran, or the supreme need there was of her presence to protect him—and had she arrived late he might have been lost. She came by the providence of God exactly in time.

Agnes outside heard the murmur of the voices, and fearing she knew not what, that her sister might say too much and disturb the equilibrium of the patient at so important a moment, came stealing into the room to prevent any overstrain of emotion. Poor Agnes had been the only mother Mar had ever known. All that he knew of maternal love and tenderness was from her, and he was to her the most cherished thing in the world, the apple of her eye. But when she came in thus upon the pair she was not welcome to either. She was a disturbing influence, a third party. They did not want her. This is so often the fate of the third that she was not surprised, but it cannot be said that she liked it. It requires a quite celestial knowledge of the heart and charity for all its waywardness to enable one to see one’s self set aside and another preferred who has not done half so much to deserve that preference. Mar indeed hailed her more openly than he had done his mother, holding out his disengaged hand to her, drawing her nearer; but it was more as a witness of his blessedness than as the cause of any part of it. And Mary got up from her knees as her sister came in, as if now the intimate things of the heart must be put away, and the ordinary ones attended to. She bent over the bed and kissed his cheek, and then she returned to the cares of the nursing, which all this time had been laid aside.

“The question now is what we should give him,” said Mary. “He must want something. It would have been wrong to disturb him in that beautiful sleep, but now that he is awake he must have something. What shall we do? Go down and forage for him, or wake this poor woman, who will be ready to kill herself——”

“I cannot be sorry for her,” said Agnes, “to sleep all through the night when she could not know how much she might be wanted.”

“It is not her fault; and it will be dreadful for her when she knows. Do you think his eyes will bear a little more light? Do you feel the light upon your eyes, my dear boy? Open that window there where it will shine upon him—Ah,” Mary cried, turning round upon the nurse, who began to move and stir. Mar felt less shy when his mother’s eyes were not upon him. He was able to take a little timid initiative of his own. He put his two thin hands upon hers, which was so soft and white and round. How soft it was to touch, a hand like velvet, no, a hand much softer than any vulgar image—like a mother’s hand, and no less; and drawing it towards him by degrees, shyly, yet with increasing boldness, got it to his pillow and laid his cheek upon it, holding it there as sometimes an infant will do. Mary withdrew her eyes from the woman, who was slowly coming to herself. She looked at her boy, pillowing his head upon her hand with that infantile movement, and a tender delight filled her heart. With her disengaged hand she pulled her sister’s sleeve, and attracted her attention. Mar gave them both a look of blessedness in his ecstasy of weakness and satisfaction, and then closed his eyes and lay as if he slept, his cheek upon that softest of pillows, and happiness in his heart. Agnes stood by and looked on, the old maid, the grim old spinster (as young men had been known to call her) with a pang which was almost insupportable, made up of pain and of pleasure. Ah, more than pleasure and more than pain—the bliss of heaven to see them thus restored to each other, and all the claims of nature set right, and yet, for she was but human, a sharp stab like a knife to see how little a part she herself had in it. She who alone had been Mar’s mother, who had worshipped the boy and was nothing to him. This keen cut forced a tear into the corner of each eye, which it filled and through which she saw everything, a medium which enlarged and softened, yet somewhat blurred the picture which was so full of consolation.

At this moment the nurse sprang to her feet with a cry. She said, “Where am I? What has happened?” and then, with a wild outcry subdued but shrill with misery, added, “I have been asleep. Oh, God forgive me, I have been asleep.”

“There is no harm done,” said Agnes coldly, advancing a step and almost glad there was some one she could be harsh to, without wrong, “his mother has been with him all the night.”

“Oh, God forgive me,” said the nurse. “Oh, what will become of me—I have slept all through the night!”

“It is very true,” said Mary, with her voice which was soft with great happiness, “but I don’t think it is your fault. Say nothing, and we will say nothing. I have been here in your place.”

“Bestir yourself, now,” said Agnes, “and tell us what he ought to have.”

“Oh, ladies,” said the unfortunate, “I never did such a thing before—never—never! You may not believe me, but it is true, and if he is the worse for it, oh, goodness, it will kill me! What shall I do? What shall I do?” She came forward to the bedside wringing her hands. Her mob cap had been pushed to one side in her sleep—an air of dissipation of having been up all night, such as never comes to the dutiful watcher, was in her whole appearance. Tears were dropping upon her white apron, making long streaks where they fell with a splash like rain. Mar, with his cheek pillowed on his mother’s hand, opened his eyes and looked at her. And there came into the too large, too lustrous eyes of the sick boy, a light that had not been in them for long, that had been rare in them at any time—the light of laughter. It was almost cruel that he should be aroused, but he was so. He raised his head a little and laughed. “She looks so funny,” he said, under his breath. It was very good for Mar to be brought down from the superlative in this casual way by a laugh.

“Bless the boy,” said Mary; “do you hear him laugh? And bless you for making him laugh, you poor soul. He is none the worse; he has slept all the time. But make haste now, and tell us what has to be done to him: what is he to take? She is dazed still; she has not got back her senses.”

“Where is the milk? Was there no milk for him? I am sure,” cried the nurse, “I put it here last night.”

Mary looked at Agnes; and Agnes, with a terrified glance at her. Was it true?

“Go,” said Miss Hill quietly; “don’t waste a moment now, and get him some fresh. Let nobody touch it. I will go with you myself,” she cried, after a moment, taking the woman by the arm. Was it true? Was it true?

“Oh,” said the nurse, “don’t think I’m like that. It never happened before—oh, never, never! No case of mine was ever neglected. Oh, ask the sisters at the hospital. Ask the doctors! I could die with shame—I, that always bragged that I was never sleepy. And why should I be sleepy, after getting my good rest?”

“How do you account for it?” said Agnes, still stern.

They were going down the great staircase together in the full flush of morning light.

“I don’t know how to account for it. Mrs. Parke brought me something which she said was restoring, in case I had a hard night. I never have taken anything, but she seemed so kind, and, perhaps, she didn’t know. I thought I oughtn’t to take it, but she seemed so kind. Oh, madam, don’t think badly of me. I’ll go back to the hospital to-day and send another. Nurse Newman or Nurse Sandown, or any of them that I looked down upon would be better than me.”

Agnes bade her dry her eyes and put her cap straight. “There is no harm done, and nothing shall be said. But you must learn a lesson from what has happened.” Her own voice sounded harsh and unfeeling to Agnes as she spoke. She would have liked to be angry, to pour out some of the pain in her heart in indignation and reproach. Could it be true, then? No dream of Mary’s, but dreadful truth. She went down with the wondering woman all the way to the dairy, where a pail of foaming milk had just been brought in, and took some of it herself back to the sick-room. So far as this went they were safe, but for all the rest what was to be done? Agnes went a great deal further than Mary in her panic and horror! Could they venture to give him anything, even a glass of water, in a house where such a thing had been done? if, indeed, it was true and not a dream.

“We must get him out of the house,” she said. “We must take him home. I brought this myself from the dairy where it had been brought straight from the cow. I drank some to test it. We must get him away. We must take him home.”

“But he is not able to go. It will be many a day yet before he can even leave his bed.”

“Then God be praised!” cried Agnes in her excitement. “I can cook. We could both do that in the old days. Everything he takes must be prepared here. We will take him into our own hands.”

Mary grew pale with the contagion of her sister’s excitement. “Do you think,” she said in a terrified whisper, “that she will try such a dreadful thing again?”

“Those who do it once may do it a hundred times,” said Agnes, with the solemnity of a popular belief. “I feel as if I were living in an enemy’s camp; but you and I will save the boy.”

CHAPTER L.

“I wish to prepare everything here,” said Agnes, in the stern tone which was so new to her, and Letty, much troubled and cast down, stole away. She was hardly gone when the other nurse appeared, fresh and neat, from her night’s sleep. “Have you had a good night?” she said; “and how is——” She started and drew back at the sight of the stranger. “Has anything happened?” she said.

“Only that his mother is with the patient, and I am his aunt. We will take charge of him in future,” said Agnes, stiffly. There were aspects in which she was a grim old spinster, as the young men said.

The nurse stared, the cheerful nurse, who had always hoped, always believed in the boy’s recovery. Agnes knew no difference between the woman who had slept all the night, and this bright daylight creature who had served him like a sister. She had been busy collecting what things she should want, preparing for the charge she had taken upon her when the nurse entered the room, and now went on with these preparations calmly, putting coals upon the fire and collecting the glasses and dishes which had been used to be carried away.

“You are making a large fire for such a warm day,” said the nurse in her astonishment.

“I shall want it,” said Agnes curtly.

“Let me do that, it is my business—and there is no hurry. I must first see my patient——”

“Nurse, I mean no discourtesy to you—but he is our patient now. His mother and I have taken the nursing into our own hands.”

The nurse stared in consternation. “Does Mrs. Parke know?” she asked, helpless in the extremity of her surprise.

“Mrs. Parke has little to do with it. His mother, Lady Frogmore, is with him, and I am here to help her. We wish to do everything ourselves.”

“But——?” gasped the nurse. She added after a moment, “You are dissatisfied with the nursing——?”

It was a struggle with Agnes not to bring forward the failure of the other nurse; but she was honorable and just, and shut her mouth close lest she should betray her. “I cannot say that,” she said, “for we have not been here. It is only natural that his mother——; and then I prefer to prepare everything for him myself.”

“To prepare everything! You must think, then, there is some reason—— Oh, here is Mr. Parke!”

That was a wonder, too; for John Parke was not an early man. And he was very pale, and looked as if he too had been up all night. As a matter of fact it was so many hours since he had been there before in the glow of the summer night which was morning, yet too early for anyone to be astir, that it seemed to him as to Agnes as if the day were already far spent. He came in looking as he had done when their anxiety was the deepest, with a cloud upon his face, and his hands deep in his pockets. “You will take your orders from Miss Hill, nurse,” he said, “and Lady Frogmore. It is natural that his mother—and my wife will not, I think, come downstairs to-day. She is asleep now, but she has had a bad night.”

“I am afraid, sir,” said the nurse, “Mrs. Parke has been doing too much.”

John Parke gave Agnes a troubled, alarmed, inquiring look, yet with a menace in his eyes as if to silence her. “Probably it’s that,” he said. And then, presently, after a pause, “It couldn’t be the fever. It’s not contagious? At least, that’s what you people say.”

“It’s not contagious; but several attacks sometimes come on in one house. May I go and see Mrs. Parke?”

“We’ll wait a little,” said John: “we’ll wait till the doctor comes. She is a little confused in her head.” He fixed his eyes upon Agnes with a great deal of meaning. “I scarcely think she knew what she was doing—last night.”

These were words that seemed so charged with meaning as to affect the air differently from other words. There seemed a little thrill in the atmosphere when they were said. And the pause that came after them was not like other pauses. There was a vibration in it of mystery and terror. And yet there was not one of the little group who quite understood what it meant. Agnes was in all the excitement of an incident which she was not at all sure was true, while John had nothing but a horrible doubt in his mind, and did not know what it was he feared. And the nurse knew nothing at all, but yet divined something perhaps more terrible than reality, if there was any reality at all. What was the mistress of the house doing last night, for which her husband gloomily said that she was not responsible? But this no one dared to say.

Mary came out at this moment from the inner room. There was nothing in her of either horror or mystery. Her grey hair was a little disordered, curling in stray locks over the black veil which she had tied upon her head; her complexion quite fresh, with its soft rose-tint unaffected by the night’s vigil; and her eyes full of light. Lady Frogmore had always possessed pretty eyes, they were the chief beauty of her face; not very bright, but always softly shining and luminous. For many years there had been, save on remarkable occasions, a sort of veil over them, a look as if they were turned inward. Now they were fully aglow, lit like two stars with a lambent quivering light. A look of supreme satisfaction and content was upon her face.

“He has taken his drink,” she said, “and gone to sleep again, like a baby. He will probably now have a long, sleep. Sleep is better for him than anything. John, we invaded your house like a couple of thieves, after dark. I had not time to ask for you or anything. I came upstairs at once, knowing I was wanted, and arrived here—just in time.”

“What do you mean by arriving just in time?” said John Parke, with an awful shadow coming over his face.

“I mean,” said Mary with a soft little laugh, “neither too early nor too late—just when I was wanted; and if you ask me how I knew that I was wanted I could not tell you. These things are mysterious. I came just at the moment—”

What moment? There was a curdling in the blood of the spectators but none in Mary. All the horror had died away; she could think of nothing but the opportuneness of her own arrival. Perhaps she had forgotten even what it was which she had stopped “in time.”

After that extraordinary thrill of silence John Parke spoke again in a voice which quivered strangely. “I came to tell you,” he said, “that Letitia is ill.”

“Ah!” said Mary. And she added gravely, “I do not wonder,” with sudden seriousness; but there was nothing more in her gentle countenance; no anger; no fear.

The nurse, who was the least enlightened of all, yet the most eager, the most full of surmises, said with anxiety, yet timidity, “Mrs. Parke has been so anxious. She has taken so much out of herself.”

“Yes, I am afraid she has been very anxious,” said Mary, still with that mild, yet strange seriousness. “It was, perhaps, very natural—in the circumstances.”

“She was afraid lest anything should be neglected, and so anxious for every help that could be thought of—everything that the doctor or we could suggest.”

The others listened silent to this plea. Nobody spoke. If Mary remembered what had happened, or if she consciously and willingly put it out of her mind, nobody could tell. She nodded her head several times in silent assent. Then she spoke, her companions all listening as if to the voice of fate.

“I understand that,” she said, “and then at the very last—it was the overstrain at the last.”

What did she mean? Even Agnes asked herself this question, wondering over again whether it was all a dream, or whether it was true. John Parke stood amid the group of women, with his heart as heavy as lead, his ears keen to hear any word that could throw light on the mystery. But none came. Was there any mystery at all? Was it a mere encounter between the mother who was happy, and the mother who was (God forgive her!) disappointed—but no more? He stood for some minutes, waiting, terrified, yet eager to hear—and then unsatisfied, yet painfully relieved, as if he had escaped a sentence of death, walked away.

The doctor came afterwards, and pronounced the highest panegyric upon Mar. He had done exactly what it was best and wisest for him to do. He had slept, he had swallowed obediently all that was given him, and gone to sleep again. There now remained nothing for him but to be promoted to the disused practices of eating, and to go on. Dr. Barker, like an elated and successful practitioner, who is aware that great honor and glory would result to himself from the happy issue of this difficult case, freely applauded everybody, even the melancholy culprit, who was a woman of the keenest conscience, and could scarcely be kept from denouncing herself. The nurses, he said, were half the battle, and he had been most ably seconded. And he was ready even to agree without the faintest idea of her meaning or any curiosity on the subject, in Mary’s happy assertion that she had arrived “just in time.” “Precisely,” the doctor said, “just when your appearance was the most invaluable stimulant—just when he was able to profit by it. I agree with you entirely, Lady Frogmore, you came in the nick of time.”

It was considered very strange in the house, accustomed to appeal to the doctor in these constant visits of his if a finger ached, that he did not see Mrs. Parke that day. John expected that she was asleep, and that it was possible she might be quite well when she woke, and Dr. Barker left the house thinking that there were too many women about, and that they were an excitable lot, as women usually were, making as much fuss about that boy as if his getting well were a miracle; whereas he (Dr. Barker) had always been certain with proper care that the boy would get well. He was not a pessimist, but always ready to think the best. And, indeed, Dr. Barker, though he did not fail to dwell upon Mar’s recovery as a wonderful proof of what science could do [“for we had no constitution to work upon, no constitution, and everything against us”] dismissed the boy otherwise from his mind and fixed his thoughts wonderingly upon Mary, who seemed to have come out of her hallucination or mania, or whatever it was, at a moment’s notice in the most astonishing way. It was as if she had always been there, always anxious about him, caring for him. And Dr. Barker smiled at her idea that she was just in time. He had observed it though he had not said anything, and put it down in a mental note book as a curious evidence of the delusions which still linger in a mind that once has been off its balance. Mary had made an immense advance by recognizing her boy, and this mild little extravagance of thinking she had come “just in time”—poor thing—showed how the wind was blowing; how her mind had been affected by the supposed imminence of a crisis. He put it down in his mind as a thing to note, when other patients were similarly affected. The reader knows that the doctor was wrong; but so are a great many, both doctors and other wise people, who take the reverberation of an accidental fact for the foundation of an all-embracing theory—from which many strange things sometimes arrive.

Agnes Hill enacted what she herself came to think afterwards a somewhat ridiculous part for the rest of this day. She had everything that could be wanted for the sick-room brought upstairs in what may be called a rude form; pieces of beef and kettles of water destined to make Mar’s beef tea, and everything else that could be thought of, so that the ante-room resembled an amateur kitchen, filled with a score of things that could be made no use of, and which the indignant cook sent up in quantities, lest the ladies should want anything. A fire sufficient to cook by in the height of summer is not a comfortable thing. And still less was the condition of mind comfortable in which Miss Hill sat watching, afraid to rest or to admit any alleviation, tolerating with difficulty the presence of the nurse who, deeply interested and curious, addressed all her faculties to the task of finding out what was meant by these precautions. The food that had been sent up from the kitchen had been very dainty; it could not be because of any imperfection in that; and the nurse smiled at the thought that she could be supposed to have been careless in the warming or preparation of anything. What then was the meaning of it? When her colleague in her agony of compunction confided the story of her dreadful failure, of the sleep that had lasted all night, and the cordial that had presumably caused it, a strange gleam of light came into the mystery. Mrs. Parke had been in the sick-room when the night nurse had fallen asleep, and when she woke in the morning Lady Frogmore was there, and Lady Frogmore had asserted again and again that she had arrived “just in time.” It seemed a wonderful gleam of light, yet on the whole it did not reveal much. What had happened, what Mrs. Parke had done, what Lady Frogmore had found, what had taken place while the legitimate guardian slept, could only be guessed and dimly guessed. The nurse formed a theory in her own mind not further from the truth than a theory unattended by actual foundations of fact usually is—much more the truth than Dr. Barker’s conclusion as to the rags of delusion which remain in the mind when its greater trouble is gone. But it was a theory which Nurse Congreve of the Ridding Hospital kept closely to herself. A nurse, like a doctor, sees many strange chapters of family history—and among them this was the most strange; but that was all that could be said.

The most curious thing was that before the day was half over, Lady Frogmore, coming into the ante-room and finding it impossible to rest there as she had intended, on account of the dreadful heat, suddenly fell into a fit of suppressed laughter at her sister’s batterie de cuisine, and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

“What is all that for?” she said. “And do you think, Agnes, that you can make things for him better than the cook?”

Miss Hill gave her sister a look full of reproach, but Lady Frogmore still laughed.

“The cook is a cordon bleu, and you will be melted away before that fire.”

“Mary!” said Agnes in a tone which meant a hundred things.

But before the time came, which was very soon, when Mar was allowed his first chicken, even Agnes’ resolution had broken down, and she began to be uncomfortably conscious that to this almost tragedy there was a ludicrous side. Lady Frogmore was the wonder of wonders during all this time. She was never tired, went without sleep night after night, and only looked the brighter in the morning; every cloud departed from her serene countenance, her eyes were lighted up with love and joy. To hear her say “my boy” was like listening to a song of triumph. It was she who shielded the night nurse from herself, and sent daily messages of inquiry about Letitia. When a day or two had elapsed she made no further mention of having arrived in time. Every appearance of having been injured, or terrified, or threatened died out of her face. She became as she had been in the old days when she first came to the Park as Lady Frogmore, but more assured, more self-possessed, like a woman above the reach of fate.

Meanwhile the centre of interest changed in the house. It was Letitia’s room which was occupied by the nurses, shadowed from the sunshine and daylight, and filled with anxious cares. The half of the county was aroused by the news that Mrs. Parke, in her devotion to her nephew, and constant attendance upon him, had contracted the same fever, and now lay between life and death.