"Thank G.o.d it was you!" Fred said, with a great, tremulous gasp. "She is so strange, so cold and self-contained,--so bitter against fate! Believe me, Jack, I have tried my utmost"--and the voice broke with something like a sob.

"I know it, dear old fellow," drawing him nearer as the blast whistled around them.

"We never learned to make each other happy, you know. We never supposed we had any special duties to one another, so it was a new task to me. I tried to interest her in something, to make her more cheerful; but she would wrap herself in that haughty, unconquerable coldness. Yet if I had known or guessed"--

"After all, there is very little danger down your end of the town," said Jack, in that light, comforting tone. "There's nothing to call tramps or roughs; and, I dare say, to-night all would have gone straight if she had not run against me, as one may say, and the fright made her faint."

"But if it had been some one else! Oh, my G.o.d!"

"It was not; so never give that a second thought. There is no use in bringing up an army of 'might-have-beens' to worry you to death when you have escaped danger. And--here we are."

"You will come in, of course?"

Jack followed his friend. Maverick had succeeded in restoring Miss Lawrence to consciousness; but she was now in a burning fever and raging delirium. Outraged nature had at last a.s.serted its sway.

"It is better so, I think," remarked Maverick, in a quiet, decisive tone. "She will have a severe run of fever, for this has been some time coming on; but she has youth and a naturally fine const.i.tution in her favor. I believe she will pull through. But some arrangement must be settled upon. It will not do to take her up-stairs; for the effect upon your mother will be too great a risk. If you could bring a bed down here--to-morrow I will see about getting a nurse."

"I think it would be better to bring her bed down stairs," rejoined Martha. "The parlor is used so little. And she would be so much more comfortable"--

Martha's eyes went over the heavy, clinging dress, the disordered hair, the bracelets that were like manacles as she threw her arms about, moaning, muttering, and laughing shrilly. The eyes rolled wildly in their senseless stare, until one's blood almost curdled.

"We must get about it immediately," began Dr. Maverick. "She will be quieter presently, and I shall remain all night. Darcy, you watch her: do not let her injure herself, while we bring down the necessary articles."

Just at this juncture Mrs. Lawrence's bell rang. The noise had startled her from her first sound sleep. Dr. Maverick explained simply, and gave her a composing draught.

"A fever! Is it any thing contagious? Yes, it is better to keep her down there: my nerves are so weak, and I think I have a very sensitive, susceptible nature. I might take any disease so easily,--do you not think so, doctor?" and Mrs. Lawrence looked up from her frills and laces and snowy pillow with the helpless air of a child.

"Much better. She may be delirious, too, and that would distress you.

Now be as quiet as possible, and try to go to sleep again. I shall remain to keep you both in order," with a laugh.

"That is very kind," she answered, with a pretty wave of her delicate hand. Her daughter might be dying below, but her nerves must be settled and cared for. Still, to do her justice, even in her intense selfishness, she never considered other people's ailments dangerous, while she held that her own precious life was constantly in peril. She talked of dying with the calmness of a saint, and admitted that there was no further charm to life, but still she must have the choicest care.

Under Martha's supervision they soon dismembered the bedstead, and brought down all necessary belongings. Jack had watched his charge, strangely exercised by her curious, changeful moods. Once she had looked meaningly at him.

"I _might_ marry you," she said, in soft, mocking tones, her scarlet lips taking on a bitter, scornful smile; "but I should come to hate you so that some night when you lay asleep I should rise and murder you! I might endure you in London, where I could be in a continual round of gayety; but at Frodsham Park, with an old man like you,--May and December! May and December!" and she laughed shrilly.

She did not mean _him_, then! Honest Jack Darcy blushed to the roots of his hair, to his very finger-ends. Some old man had wanted her: well, she was braver and truer, then, than most people would admit.

The three came in, and transformed the parlor to a hospital-ward, without the simplicity. Jack suddenly thought of his mother, and hurried away. What an eventful walk it had been! and Hope Mills was quite driven out of his mind.

He found his mother frightened and hysterical; and drawing her down beside him he told her the story of his wanderings, expressing with some tender kisses his sorrow for her alarm, and advised her to go to bed at once, as he meant to do. And, though it might not be romantic after such an adventure, I must admit that in ten minutes my hero was soundly asleep, oblivious of both storm and business.

At the house he had left, there was but little refreshing rest. Mrs.

Lawrence drowsed away when the confusion of re-arrangement had subsided.

The gentlemen retired to the library while Martha disrobed her young mistress with inward fear and trembling, hardly being able to judge what was due to delirium, and what to natural imperiousness. Then Dr.

Maverick kindly dismissed her.

"You will need your strength in the morning," said he. "Try to get at least one good nap."

He took his station at the bedside, and motioned Fred to an armchair just out of his sister's range. The opiate was not working successfully, but at present he did not consider it wise to increase it. He questioned him a little as to Miss Irene's habits and resources, and imagined the part withheld, from that rather reluctantly admitted. He understood that here kindred blood had not produced harmony, but a horrible discord, the more wearing in that every note had been m.u.f.fled. The self-commiseration of the mother, and her weak love for her son that could only pity, but never encourage or brace to any vigorous effort; her total inability to comprehend any such character as her youngest daughter possessed; the wearisome plat.i.tudes enunciated in the belief that they were golden grains of worldly wisdom, the only kind she supposed existed; the weak, vapid repining that she had not married when she might have done so well, the discouraging certainty that no marriage was possible in this second-rate town, and that to remain single was a stigma and a misfortune. In her weak but querulous complaints, which she meant in part for sympathy, she had worn and exasperated Irene as much as Mrs.

Minor: only here there were no lovers, and there Mrs. Minor looked upon every single man of means as a fish to be skilfully angled for.

If Irene had been thrown completely upon her own resources, if she had been compelled to step entirely out of her olden sphere, and earn her daily bread, there would have been a sharp, bitter fight, but the bracing mental atmosphere might have dispelled the thick darkness, the chilling vacuity, and evolved from the discordant elements a questioning and not easily satisfied soul, but one destined to develop into strength and n.o.bler uses. But here, she said to herself, there was nothing. Friendship could not come to her aid--she would have none of it. No one should study her with curious eyes, to see how she bore her trials, her losses, the downfall of her pride. Strangers who had glanced at her with envy in her pretty pony-phaeton, or the magnificent family barouche, should not smile in triumph as they saw her walking by. As she had scorned others in her grandeur, so others would rejoice that she had been brought low. She had seen so much of the narrowness, the petty spite, the sharp stings of the world, that her sensitive flesh shrank at every pulse.

She could understand now how high-bred women, when friends and fortune had flown, had shut themselves in convents. That she would have been glad to do. Any entire renunciation would have met with her approval.

But to gather up the threads of a commonplace existence, to find joy and solace in daily duties, to work for others, to even show others how trials and misfortunes could be borne to the perfect working-out of n.o.bler aims and uses, was not for her. She had never been trained to any such purpose. A heathen of the heathens in a Christian country, the product of fashion, wealth, and so-called refinement.

In the solitude to which she condemned herself, she came to brooding over a desperate, worldly philosophy. Should she go back, and retrace her steps, and marry? There were days when she absolutely contested the ground inch by inch, and almost decided.

Her long rapid walks, generally at night when her brain was wild with the bitter warfare, had served a useful purpose, and kept her in better health. But the strain could not last forever. For days she had alternated between a chilly, stupid languor, and hours when her brain seemed on fire, when, indeed, she hated the whole world with a bitter, awful intensity. In this mood she had stolen out for her walk.

And now the outraged soul had burst its bonds, and revelled in a fearful revenge. All the ache and repression put upon it; all this silent endurance; all the solitary hours of maddening thought, the wasted riches, the spurned sympathy, the youth poisoned by false doctrines,--every secret sin committed against it, cried aloud, and would not be throttled, nor thrust back into the dreary dungeon.

Fred listened to her ravings in stunned, helpless astonishment. His trial had been so much less intense, after all. Could it be possible she had suffered this as she sat so like a statue in the little circle, disdaining every aid? His startled eyes questioned the doctor.

"Yes," was the reply: "she has been too much alone. She has brooded over these things until she has become morbid and imbittered. The curse of fashionable life is, that it provides a woman with no resources against a dark day, no wisdom, no faith in any thing outside of herself. And then we wonder at insanity! A thousand times better that the body should be racked with pain, if so be that the soul is purified in pa.s.sing through these fires. It may be her salvation."

CHAPTER XX.

THE morning's mail brought to Darcy the letter he had hardly dared expect. It was brief but cordial. Would he come to New York, and the matter could be arranged to his satisfaction? "He had not been very eager to ask favors."

"We'll weather through, Winston!" he cried joyfully. "I must go to New York. Miss McLeod has sent."

Then he ran off home, and arrayed himself in spotless linen and immaculate cuffs, complained a little that Jane Morgan should be away, and begged his mother to ask in some of the pretty, friendly girls living in the next house, if he should not be home to supper. There was a late train that he would be quite sure of, if the business detained him until night. Then he kissed her tenderly: she was still a little shaken from her last night's vigil.

He went around by Maverick's office, though it took him out of his way; but he must hear some word of Miss Lawrence.

"She is very ill, and will be for some time to come; but I am wonderfully interested in the case. It's a brain-fever. The girl is a study in herself. She has the force and power, and capability of both suffering and endurance, that would answer for half a dozen souls; but it has come pretty nearly to a wreck. Did you ever know much about her?"

"No. I once spent an evening with Miss Barry when she was there," and Jack flushed. "It was before Mr. Lawrence died. They used to be great friends, you know."

"And it ended like most women's friendships, eh?" with a peculiar light in his eyes as he spoke.

"No: it broke off in the middle; regards have a trick of doing that when they're not ended, you know. Sylvie is very generous: she would go there to-day if she were needed."

"Would she? She may be before it is all over."

"Go down and tell her, Maverick, when you are in that direction."

Maverick nodded.

Darcy was just in time to catch his train. There had been quite a fall of snow from midnight to dawn, and the trees were glittering with thousands of diamond-sparks and patches of fleecy ermine. The winding roads were white; the cottages and the fence-posts were hooded; and the snow caught all the tints of sun and shadowy lights, reflecting them back like a mirror. His heart was so light as they whirled along, he smiled, and could hardly forbear shouting at a group of boys who were snow-balling by the roadside.

He met Miss McLeod at Mr. Hildreth's. They had the private office to themselves; and he related the mishaps of the past three months, showed her the actual figures, and admitted that times seemed really harder than last year. There was such a horrible shrinkage everywhere! Still there must be some trade presently,--it always had been so in the history of the world.