CHAPTER XXIX.POOR MAGDA.
Nobody paid any attention to her on the morning following her visit to the library, except Celine, and Frank and Roger. The latter had sent her a bouquet which he arranged himself, while Frank, remembering that this was the day when she was to give him her answer, had asked if she would see him, and Celine, through whom the message was sent, had brought him word that “Miss Lennox was too sick to see any one.” Then Frank had begged his mother to go to her and ascertain if she were seriously ill, and that lady had said she would, but afterward found it convenient to be so busy with other matters, that nursing a sick girl who was nothing to her now except a person whom she must if possible remove from her son’s way, was out of the question. She did not care to see Magdalen just then, and she left her to the care of Celine, who carried her toast and tea about nine o’clock and urged her to eat it. But Magdalen was not hungry, and bade the girl leave her alone, as she wanted rest more than anything. At eleven Celine went to her again and foundher sleeping heavily, with a flush on her cheeks, and her head occasionally moving uneasily on the pillow. Celine was not accustomed to sickness, and if her young mistress was sleeping she believed she was doing well, and stole softly from the room. At one she went again, finding Magdalen still asleep, but her whole face was crimson, and she was talking to herself and rolling her head from side to side, as if suffering great pain. Then Celine went for Mrs. Walter Scott, who, alarmed by the girl’s representations, went at once to Magdalen. She was awake now, but she did not recognize any one, and kept moaning and talking about her head, which she said was between two planks in the garret, where she could not get it out. Mrs. Walter Scott saw she was very sick, and though she did not pet or caress or kiss the feverish, restless girl, she did her best to soothe and quiet her, and sent Celine for the family physician, who came and went before either Roger or Frank knew that danger threatened Magdalen.
“Typhoid fever, aggravated by excitement and some sudden exposure to cold,” was the doctor’s verdict. “Typhoid in its most violent form, judging from present symptoms;” and then Mrs. Walter Scott, who affected a mortal terror of that kind of fever, declared her unwillingness to risk her life by staying in the sick-room, and sent for Hester Floyd.
The old woman’s animosity against Magdalen had cooled a little, and when she heard how sick she was she started for her at once.
“She nussed me through a fever, and I’d be a heathen to neglect her now, let her be ever so big a piece of trumpery,” she said to herself as she went along the passage to Magdalen’s room.
But when she reached it, and saw the moaning, tossing girl, and heard her sad complaints of her head wedged in between the boards, and her pleadings for some one to get it out, her old love for the child came surging back, and she bent over her lovingly, saying to her softly, “Poor Maggie, old Hester will get your head out, she will, she will—there—there—isn’tit a bit easier now?” and she rubbed and bathed the burning head, and gave the cooling drink, and administered the little globules in which she had no faith, giving eight instead of six and sometimes even ten. And still there was no change for the better in Magdalen, who talked of the will, which she was trying to burn, and then of Roger, but not a word of Frank, who was beside her now, his face pale with fear and anxiety as he saw the great change in Magdalen, and how fast her fever increased.
Roger was the last to hear of it, for he had been busy in the library ever since Lawyer Schofield’s departure, and did not know what was passing in the house until Hester went to him, and said:
“She thinks her head is jammed in between them boards in the garret floor, and nobody but you can pry it out. I guess you had better see her. Mr. Frank is there, of course, as he or’ to be after what I seen in the hall yesterday.”
“What did you see?” Roger asked, and Hester replied:
“I found her in my room when I went from here and I spoke my mind freely, I s’pose, about her snoopin’ after the will when you had done so much for her, and she gave a scart kind of screech, and ran out into the hall, where Mr. Frank met her, and put his arm round her and led her to her own door, and kissed her as he had a right to if she’s to be his wife.”
Roger made no reply to this, but tried to exonerate Magdalen from all blame with regard to the will, telling what he knew about her finding it, and begging Hester to lay aside her prejudice, and care for Magdalen as she would have done six weeks ago.
And Hester promised, and called herself a foolish old woman for having distrusted the girl, and then went back to the sick-room, leaving Roger to follow her at his leisure. Something in Magdalen’s manner the previous night had led him to hope that possibly she was not irrevocably bound to Frank; there might be some mistake, and the future was not half so dreary when he thought of her sharing it with him. But Hester’s story swept all that away. Magdalen was lost to him, lostforever and ever, and for a moment he staggered under the knowledge just as if it were the first intimation he had received of it. Then recovering himself he went to Magdalen’s bedside, and when at sight of him she stretched her arms towards him and begged him to release her head, he bent over her as a brother might and took her aching head upon his broad chest and held it between his hands, and soothed and quieted her until she fell away to sleep. Very carefully he laid her back upon the pillow, and then meeting in Frank’s eye what seemed to be reproach for the liberty he had taken, he said to him in an aside, “You need not be jealous of your old uncle, boy. Let me help you nurse Magda as if she was my sister. She is going to be very sick.”
Frank had never distrusted Roger and he believed him now, and all through the long, dreary weeks when Magdalen lay at the very gates of death, and it sometimes seemed to those who watched her as if she had entered the unknown world, he never lost faith in the man who stood by her so constantly, partly because he could not leave her, and partly because she would not let him go. She got herheadat last from between the boards, but it was Roger who released it for her, and with a rain of tears, she cried, “It’s out; I shall be better now;” then, lying back among her pillows, she fell into the quietest, most refreshing sleep she had known for weeks. The fever was broken, the doctor said, though it might be days before her reason was restored, and weeks before she could be moved, except with the greatest care. When the danger was over and he knew she would live, Roger absented himself from the sick-room, where he was no longer needed. She did not call for him now; she did not talk at all, but lay perfectly passive and quiet, receiving her medicines from one as readily as from another, and apparently taking no notice of anything transpiring around her. But she was decidedly better, and knowing this Roger busied himself with the settlement of his affairs, as he wished to leave Millbank as soon as possible.