"And I believed in you!"

CHAPTER XI

She looked at him in a blind sort of way. His words made only a hazy impression; but neither of the men could know that.

"Believed in me?" she echoed, smiling faintly. "Why, did you?"

"Yes," said Francis with a concentrated fury that reached even her confused senses. "But I never will again! I thought--I was beginning to think--you were the sort of woman you said. But you're just a flirt. Any man is better than the one you're married to."

"I--I think you want me to go," she said, trying to see him. She could see two Francises, as a matter of fact, neither of them clearly.

"Yes, I do. Either of these men you've befooled can see you on your way. And I'll start divorce proceedings, or you may, immediately."

He said more than that; but that was all she could get. The words hurt her, in spite of their lack of meaning. Francis hated her; he thought she was a bad girl, who never kept her word. And she wasn't.

"I--I want to be good," she said aimlessly, as she had said to Pennington a little earlier. "I"--she lost the thread again--"I'll go."

She rose, dropping the cup and saucer on her knee, and not stopping to pick them up. She caught hold of the doorpost to carry her in, and dropped down on a seat inside. It was not that she was weak, but she felt giddy. She wondered again if it was the swamp. Probably. She finally made her way back to her own room, mixed herself some spirits of ammonia and took it, and sat down to pull herself together. Through the wooden part.i.tion she could hear the furious voices of the men on the porch outside. She wondered if Francis would say more dreadful things to her while he took her over in the side-car. She hoped not.

Presently the dizziness departed for a few minutes, and she tried to pack. She did not seem able to manage it. If she was allowed to stay at the Lodge with the O'Maras, she could send Peggy over to gather up her things. Yes, that would be the best way to do.

She pinned on her hat and drew her cloak around her, just as she was, and came out. Pennington and Francis were standing up, facing her, and having a quarrel which might last some time.

"I'm ready," she said weakly.

She knew she should have stood up there, and told Francis how unkind and unjust and bad-tempered and jealous he was, and defend herself from his accusations. But she was too tired to do it; and besides, words seemed so far away, and feelings seemed far away, too. Francis and the work at the cabin and Pennington, with his kind, plump, rueful face, and even the O'Maras and Logan, seemed suddenly unreal and of little account. The only thing that really mattered was a chance to go somewhere and lie down and sleep. Perhaps she could lean back a little in the side-car as he took her over.

Francis broke off short in what he was saying, and went without looking at her toward the place where he kept his motor-cycle. Perhaps he thought that it did not matter, now, whether he left her with Pennington or not.

Pennington, for his part, turned around--he had been standing so that his back was toward her--and began to speak. Marjorie thought he was saying something to the effect that he was very sorry that he had made this trouble for her, and that he had been trying to explain; and thought he could make Francis hear reason when he had cooled off.

"It doesn't really matter," she said wearily. "Only tell him to hurry, because I'm--so--sleepy."

She sank into the chair where she had been sitting before Francis appeared, and leaned back and shut her eyes. Pennington, with a concerned look on his face, came nearer her at that, and looked down at her, reaching down to feel her pulse. She moved her hand feebly away.

"Francis--wouldn't like it," she said; and that was the last thing she remembered distinctly, though afterwards when she tried she seemed to recall hearing Pennington, very far off in the distance, calling peremptorily, "Ellison! Ellison! Come here at once!"

She wondered faintly why Pennington should want to hurry him up. It was about this time that she quietly slipped sidewise from her chair, and was in a little heap on the veranda before he could turn and catch her, or Francis could respond to the summons.

"This is what you've done," was what Pennington said quietly when Francis reappeared. He did not offer to touch Marjorie or pick her up.

Francis flung himself down on his knees beside his wife. Then he looked up at Pennington, with a last shade of suspicion in his eyes.

"What do you think it is?" he asked. "Is she really fainting?"

"You young fool, no!" said Pennington. "She's ill."

"Ill!" said Francis, and gathered her up and laid her on the settee at the other end of the porch. "What's the matter, do you think? Is it serious?"

His words were quiet enough, but there was a note of anguish in his voice which made Pennington sorry for him in spite of himself. But he did not show much mercy.

"It is probably overwork," he said. "We've all done what we could to spare her, but a child like this shouldn't be put at drudgery, even to satisfy the most jealous or selfish man. You've had a china cup, my lad, and you've used it as if it was tin. And it's broken, that's all."

Francis looked down at Marjorie, holding her head in his arms. It lay back limply. Her eyes were half open, and her heart, as he put his hand over it, was galloping. Her cheeks were beginning to be scarlet, and her hand, when he reached down and touched it, burned. He looked up at Pennington with an unconscious appeal, unmindful of the older man's harsh words.

"Do you think she'll die?" he asked.

"I have no way of knowing. If she does, you have the consolation of knowing that you've done what you could toward it."

"Oh, my G.o.d, don't, Pennington!" cried out Francis, clutching Marjorie tighter unconsciously. "It's as true as gospel. But let up now. Get somebody. Do something, for heaven's sake! You know about medicine a little, don't you?"

"Take her inside and put her to bed," Pennington commanded shortly.

"I'll take your motor-cycle and go for Mother O'Mara. I can get a doctor from there by to-morrow, perhaps."

Francis gathered the limp little body up again without a word. Only he turned at the door for a last appeal.

"Can't you tell at all what it is?"

"Fever, I think. She's caught malarial fever, perhaps. She wouldn't have done if she'd been stronger. Take her in."

So Francis carried his wife over the threshold, into the little brown room he had decked for her so long ago, and laid her down again. Her head fell back on the pillow, and her hands lay as he dropped them. He stood back and looked at her, a double terror in his heart. She would never love him again. How could she? And she would die--surely she would die, and he had killed her.

"I'm--going," she said very faintly, as a sleep-talker speaks. She was not conscious of what she said, but it was the last straw for Francis.

He had not slept nor eaten lately, and he had worked double time all day to keep his mind from the state of things, ever since he had brought her back. So perhaps it was not altogether inexcusable that he flung himself on the floor by the bedside and broke down.

He was aroused after awhile by the touch of Marjorie's hand. He lifted his head, thinking she had come to and touched him knowingly. But he saw that it was only that she was tossing a little, with the restlessness of the fever, and his heart went down again.

He pulled himself up from the bedside, and went doggedly at his work of undressing her and putting her to bed.

She was as easy to handle as a child; and once or twice, when he had to lift or turn her in the process of undressing, he could feel how light she was, and that she was thinner. She had always been a little thing, but the long weeks of work had made her almost too thin--not too thin for her own tastes, because, like all the rest of the women of the present, she liked it; but thin enough to give Francis a fresh pang of remorse. He felt like a slave-driver.

When he had finished his task, he stood back, and wondered if there was anything else he could do before Pennington came back with Mrs. O'Mara, and with or without a doctor. He felt helpless, and as if he had to stand there and watch her die. He got water and tried to make her drink it--ineffectually--he filled a hot water bottle and brought it in, and then thought better of it. She had a fever already. Then he thought of bathing her in cold water; but he could not bring himself to do that. He had already done enough that she would hate him for, in the way of undressing her. He must never tell her he had done that. . . . But she would hate him anyway. So he ended by sitting miserably down on the floor beside her, and waiting the interminable hours that the time seemed until the others returned.

He had expected Mrs. O'Mara to reproach him, as Pennington had, as being the person to blame for Marjorie's state. But the dear soul, comforting as always, said nothing of the sort. She said very little of any sort, indeed; she merely laid off the bonnet and cloak she had come in, and went straight at her work of looking after Marjorie. Only on her way she stopped to give Francis a comforting pat on the shoulder.

"It's not so bad but it might be worse," she said. "Anybody might git them fevers without a stroke of work done. An' she's young an' strong."

Francis looked up at her in mute grat.i.tude from where he sat.

"An' now clear out, lie down and rest, down on the couch or annywhere ye like, till I see what's to be done to this girl," she went on.

He went out without a word, and sat down on the window-seat, where the banjo lay, still, and picked it up mechanically. He could see Marjorie, now, with it in her hands, singing to it for the men--or, sometimes, just for him. How gay she had been through everything, and how plucky, and how sweet! And just because she was gay he had thought she was selfish and fickle, and didn't care. And because she had never said anything about how hard the work was, he had thought--he could forgive himself even less for this--that it wasn't hard. Looking back, he could see not one excuse for himself except in his carrying her off.

That might have worked all right, if he could have kept his temper. He let his mind stray back over what might have been; suppose he had accepted Logan's following her up here as just what it was--the whim of a man in love with Marjorie. Suppose he had believed that Pennington could kiss his wife's hand without meaning any harm; suppose, in fine, that he had believed in Marjorie's desire and intention to do right, even if she had been a coward for a few minutes to begin with?

Then--why, then--