This is carrying the war into the enemy's quarters, and so I feel it.

For the moment it shuts my mouth.

"Who is it that has put such notions into your head?" he asks, with gathering excitement, speaking with rapid pa.s.sion. "_Some one_ has! I am as sure as that I stand here that they did not come there of themselves.

There was no room for such suspicions in the pure soul of the girl I married."

I make no answer.

"If it were not for the _misery_ of it," he goes on, that dark flush that colored his bronzed face the other night again spreading over it, "I could _laugh_ at the gross absurdity of the idea! To begin such fooleries at _my_ age! Nancy, Nancy!" his tone changing to one of reproachful, heart-rending appeal--"has it never struck you that it is a little hard, considering all things, that _you_ should suspect _me_?"

Still I am silent.

"Tell me what you wish me to do!" he cries, with pa.s.sionate emphasis.

"Tell me what you wish me to leave undone! I will do it! I will leave it undone! You are a little hard upon me, dear: indeed you are--some day I think that you will see it--but it was not your own thought! I know that as well as if you had told me! It was suggested to you--_by whom_ you best know, and whether his words or mine are most worthy of credit!"

He is looking at me with a fixed, pathetic mournfulness. There is in his eyes a sort of hopelessness and yet patience.

"We are _miserable_, are not we?" he goes on, in a low voice--"_most_ miserable! and it seems to me that every day we grow more so, that every day there is a greater dissonance between us! For my part, I have given up the hope that we can ever be happier! I have wondered that I should have entertained it. But, at least, we might have _peace_!"

There is such a depth of depression, such a burden of fatigue in his voice, that the tears rise in my throat and choke the coming speech.

"At least you are undeceived about me, are not you?" he says, looking at me with an eager and yet almost confident expectation. "At least, you believe me!"

But I answer nothing. It is the tears that keep me dumb, but I think that he thinks me still unconvinced, for he turns away with a groan.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

"I made a posy while the day ran by, Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie My life within this band; But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they By noon most cunningly did steal away, And withered in my hand!"

We are home again now; we have been away only three days after all, but they seem to me like three years--three disastrous years--so greatly during them has the gulf between Roger and me widened and deepened.

Looking back on what it was before that, it seems to me now to have been but a shallow and trifling ditch, compared to the abyss that it is now.

We left Mr. Parker standing at the hall-door, his red hair flaming bravely in the morning sun, loudly expressing his regret at our departure, and trying to extract an unlikely promise from us that we will come back next week.

During the drive home we none of us hardly speak. Roger and I are gloomily silent, Barbara sympathetically so. Barbara has the happiest knack of being in tune with every mood; she never jostles with untimely mirth against any sadness. I think she sees that my wounds are yet too fresh and raw to bear the gentlest handling, so she only pours upon them the balm of her tender silence. There is none of the recognized and allowed selfishness of a betrothed pair about Barbara. Sometimes I almost forget that she _is_ engaged, so little does she ever bring herself into the foreground; and yet, if it were not for us, I think that to-day she could well find in her heart to be mirthful.

After all is said and done, I _still_ love Barbara. However much the rest of my life has turned to Dead Sea apples, I still love Barbara; and, what is more, I shall always love her now. Is not she to live at only a stone's-throw from me? I do not think that I am of a very gushing nature generally, but as I think these thoughts I take hold of her slight hand, and give it a long squeeze. Somehow the action consoles me.

Two more days pa.s.s. It is morning again, and I am sitting in my boudoir, doing nothing (I never seem to myself to do any thing now), and listlessly thinking how yellow the great horse-chestnut in the garden is turning, and how kindly and becomingly Death handles all leaves and flowers, so different from the bitter spite with which he makes havoc of _us_, when Roger enters. It surprises me, as it is the first time that he has done it since our return.

We are on the formalest terms now; perhaps so best; and, if we have to address each other, do it in the shortest little icy phrases. When we are _obliged_ to meet, as at dinner, etc., we both talk resolutely to Barbara. He does not look icy now; disturbed rather, and anxious. He has an open note in his hand.

"Nancy," he says, coming quickly up to me, "did you know that Algy was at Laurel Cottage?"

"Not I!" I answer, tartly. "He does not favor me with his plans; tiresome boy. He is more bother than he is worth."

"Hush!" he says, hastily yet gently. "Do not say any thing against him; you will be sorry if you do. He is _ill_."

"_Ill!_" repeat I, in a tone of consternation, for among us it is a new word, and its novelty is awful. "What is the matter with him?"

Then, without waiting for an answer, I s.n.a.t.c.h the note from his hand. I do not know to this day whether he meant me to read it or not, but I think he _did_, and glance hastily through it. I am well into it before I realize that it is from my rival.

"MY DEAR ROGER:

"My hand is trembling so much that I can hardly hold the pen, but, _as usual_, in my troubles, I turn to you. Algy Grey is here. You, who always understand, will know how much against my will his coming was, but he _would_ come; and you know, poor fellow, how headstrong he is! I am grieved to tell you that he was taken ill this morning; I sadly fear that it is this wretched low fever that is so much about. It makes me _miserable_ to leave him! If I consulted my own wishes, I need not tell _you_ that I should stay and nurse him; but alas! I know by experience the sharpness of the world's tongue, and in my situation I dare not brave it; nor would it be fair upon Mr. Huntley that I should. Ah! what a different world it would be if one might follow one's own impulses! but one may not, and so I am leaving at once. I shall be gone before this reaches you."

I throw the letter down on the floor with a gesture of raging disgust.

"Gone!" I say, with flashing eyes and lifted voice; "is it possible that, after having decoyed him there, she is leaving him now to die, _alone_?"

"So it seems," he answers, looking back at me with an indignation hardly inferior to my own. "I could not have believed it of her."

"He will die!" I say a moment after, forgetting Mrs. Huntley, and breaking into a storm of tears. "I _know_ he will! I always said we were too prosperous. Nothing has ever happened to us. None of us have ever gone! I _know_ he will die; and I said yesterday that I liked him the least of all the boys. Oh, I _wish_ I had not said it.--Barbara!

Barbara! I _wish_ I had not said it."

For Barbara has entered, and is standing silently listening. The roses in her cheeks have paled, indeed, and her blue eyes look large and frightened; but, unlike me, she makes no crying fuss. With noiseless dispatch she arranges every thing for our departure. Neither will she hear of Algy's dying. He will get better. We will go to him at once--all three of us--and will nurse him so well that he will soon be himself again; and whatever happens (with a kindling of the eye, and G.o.dly lightening of all her gentle face), is not _G.o.d_ here--G.o.d _our friend_?

This is what she keeps saying to me in a soft and comforting whisper during our short transit, with her slight arm thrown round me as I sob in helpless wretchedness on her shoulder. It is very foolish, very childish of me, but I cannot get it out of my head, that I said I liked him the least. It haunts me still when I stand by his bedside, when I see his poor cheeks redder than mine were when they wore their rouge, when I notice the hot drought of his parched lips. It haunts me still with disproportioned remorse through all the weeks of his illness.

For the time stretches itself out to weeks--abnormal, weary weeks, when the boundaries of day and night confound themselves--when each steps over into his brother's territories--when it grows to feel natural, wakefully, to watch the candle's ghostly shadows, flickering at midnight, and to s.n.a.t.c.h fitful sleeps at noon! to watch the autumnal dawns coldly breaking in the gloom of the last, and to have the stars for companions.

His insane exposure of himself to the rage of the storm, on the night of the picnic, has combined, with previous dissipation, to lower his system so successfully as to render him an easy booty to the low, crawling fever, which, as so often in autumn, is stealing sullenly about, to lay hold on such as through any previous cause of weakness are rendered the more liable to its attacks. Slowly it saps the foundations of his being.

But Algy has always loved life, and had a strong hold on it; neither will he let go his hold on it now, without a tough struggle; and so the war is long and bitter, and we that fight on Algy's side are weak and worn out.

Sometimes the silence of the night is broken by the boy's voice calling strongly and loudly for Zephine. Often he mistakes me for her--often Barbara--catches our hands and covers them with insane kisses.

Sometimes he appeals to her by the most madly tender names--names that I think would surprise Mr. Huntley a good deal, and perhaps not altogether please him; sometimes he alludes to past episodes--episodes that perhaps would have done as well to remain in their graves.

On such occasions I am dreadfully frightened, and very miserable; but all the same, I cannot help glancing across at Roger, with a sort of triumph in my eyes--sort of _told-you-so_ expression, from which it would have required a loftier nature than mine to refrain.

And so the days go on, and I lose reckoning of time. I could hardly tell you whether it were day or night.

My legs ache mostly a good deal, and I feel dull and drowsy from want of sleep. But the brunt of the nursing falls upon Barbara.

When he was well--even in his best days--Algy was never very reasonable--very considerate--neither, you may be sure, is he so now.

It is always Barbara, Barbara, for whom he is calling. G.o.d knows I do my best, and so does Roger. No most loving mother could be gentler, or spare himself less, than he does; but somehow we do not content him.

It is not to every one that the gift of nursing is vouchsafed. I think I am clumsy. Try as I will, my hands are not so quick and light and deft as hers--my dress rustles more, and my voice is less soothing.

And so it is always "Barbara! Barbara!" And Barbara is always there--always ready.

The lovely flush that outdid the garden-flowers has left her cheeks indeed, and her eyelids are drooped and heavy; but her eyes shine with as steady a sweetness as ever; for G.o.d has lit in them a lamp that no weariness can put out.

Sometimes I think that if one of the lovely spirits that wait upon G.o.d in heaven were sent down to minister here below, he would not be very different in look and way, and holy tender speech, from our Barbara.

Whether it be through her nursing, or by the strength of his own const.i.tution, and the tenacious vitality of youth, or, perhaps, the help of all three, Algy pulls through.