CHAPTER XXIN THE SICK-ROOM
Rex seemed worse, perhaps, than he really was, because of the delirium which increased rapidly after his interview with Rena. The sweat which stood in so big drops upon his face and hands was gone, leaving his skin parched and dry. His head was very hot and rolled from side to side, following the eye, which he said was watching him and moving from point to point. Sometimes it dropped upon the pillow over his shoulder and sometimes on the bed close to him, when he would try to brush it off. How the idea of the eye originated I could not guess, but Colin knew, and after listening awhile to Rex’s ravings he left the room muttering something about stopping the infernal nonsense. Calling Nixon he bade him take some heavy planks and cover up the well, putting a big stone on the centre plank, so it could not be removed easily. Then he came back, and sitting down by Rex tried to quiet him, telling him the eye was in the well with the mirror, and he had covered it up.
“You needn’t tell me that,” Rex said. “It’s on your coat-sleeve, this minute, winking up at you. Don’t you see it.”
“Whew!” Colin exclaimed, jumping up and brushing his sleeve vigorously, while Rex laughed.
“You don’t like it either—that big blue eye staring at you—but you don’t budge it at all. It sticks with all your brushing. There it is on your shoulder now.”
“This is awful,” Colin said. “I think I’ll get out.”
He left the room hurriedly, taking the eye with him, so that for a time Rex was free from its tormenting presence. But it came back again, and all through the night and the next day he watched it and talked about it, while his fever increased and his temperature went up and the doctor began to look anxious, wondering how we could rid ourselves of that eye which was making us both so nervous, especially when Rex called out that it had alighted upon some part of our person. Even I began to brush myself and to fancy I saw it flitting through the room and alighting first on Rex and then on myself, and was afraid I was losing my nerve, and wondering what I should do.
It was not until the second day that Rena came again, bringing the good news that Tom was comingthe next morning. He had apprised her by telegram, and her face was very bright and happy.
“Tom will know just what to do,” she said, and then asked if she could see Mr. Travers.
I did not think it best, he was so wild with delirium. The eye was in full chase now around the room, and he was following it with feverish, bloodshot eyes, which did not rest long upon anything. A new fancy had also taken possession of him, and when it was not the eye it was a braid of blonde hair floating out to sea, while he laughed as he watched it mounting wave after wave until it finally disappeared and the eye came to the front again. Rena could have thrown light upon the hair, but the eye puzzled her. Sam had told Lottie what he had seen at the well, and girl-like Lottie had told Rena, who thus knew that Rex had looked in the well, but not of the half face and the eye.
“Let me see him,” she pleaded. “Don’t you know I told you I could quiet people?”
Against my better judgment I let her into the room where Rex was trying to catch the eye as it moved back and forth in front of him.
“Oh, is that you?” he said. “Quite a game of shuttlecock I am having. Come and see if you can catch it.”
I had been trained in one of the best hospitals inNew York, and thought I knew how to treat the fancies of crazy people, but I gave the palm to Rena, who went up to Rex and said, “Certainly, I can,” and taking both his hands in one of hers she gave a rapid sweep in the air with the other.
“I have it,” she cried, closing her hand tightly.
“Let me see,” he said, trying to lift his head from the pillow.
“Oh, no,” Rena answered. “It might escape, and I am going to send it after that braid of hair.”
She went to the window, made an outward motion as if throwing something from her, then returned to Rex, who was looking at her wonderingly.
“It’s gone,” she said, and taking her seat beside him she laid her hand upon his head, telling him he must be quiet.
For a while he lay perfectly still, sometimes, with his eyes closed, but oftener with them fixed upon Rena to whom he said at last, “It makes me think of that night in the grove ever so many years ago when you picked the pine-needles from Tom’s neck and I wished you were picking them from mine. Do you remember it?”
“Hush! You are not to talk,” Rena replied, and he was quiet again until the eye came in at the window, and with a start, he exclaimed, “There it is! I don’t believe it found that braid.”
With a tact I could not understand, Rena managed to send the eye away again and to keep Rex so quiet that I dreaded the time when she must leave. I knew she ought to go and suggested it to her, but she stayed until the clock struck five, and then left the room so noiselessly that Rex, who was sleeping, did not awaken. In the lower hall she met Colin. He had thought the matter over very seriously and concluded that although it was a foolish joke, it was like a girl, and he had perhaps been too hard on Rena. With Irene he was still angry. She had acted the biggest lie, he thought, and then she was not real. She was bogus, and had tried to win Rex under false colors, and had let him treat her as if she was to be Rex’s wife. He was ashamed of all the things he had said to her on that subject and vexed that she had accepted them so sweetly as if they belonged to her. She was a fraud and did not seem as grand and beautiful as she had at first. Rena, however, was real. She was related to Nannie. She was the girl Sandy had seen and admired, and though he mentally called her a little hussy for trying such a doubtful experiment, he forgave her entirely when he heard she was with Rex “keeping that confounded eye away.” When he met her in the hall she simply bowed to him and was hurrying on when he put his hand on her shoulder saying:“Not so fast. I want to speak to you. I was a brute the other day to talk as I did, but I was mad for a minute, and now I don’t think the joke a nice one; but, by George! you did stand up square for Irene when I came down so heavily on her. I believe you’ve just as much head on you as she has, and it beats me how you manage Rex and that eye—her eye. He was fool enough to look in the well. Did you know it?”
Rena nodded and he went on: “He says he saw half her face and one eye, but Lord, he didn’t see anything; he couldn’t.”
“Yes, he did; or he might,” Rena answered, beginning to understand, and repeating Sam’s story and adding: “Tom tried the same thing on me, and I saw half his face; so it can be done. Of course Mr. Travers knew it was a joke. Irene must have told him.”
Colin shook his head doubtfully. Rex had said nothing about a joke, or an explanation from Irene, as he would have done had there been any, and something like a suspicion of the truth began to creep into his mind, making him still more indignant at Irene. But he said nothing except that “when men like Rex went into such rot and got crazy it was time the performance was stopped,” and he had ordered the well closed up and wasglad the glass was broken, although he presumed there would be a howling among the young people who might try to open the well. Then he added, as she turned to leave him, “You are not to walk home; you are too tired. I shall order the carriage.”
Rena was very tired and she accepted Colin’s offer gladly and was driven home by Nixon. With Rena gone Rex’s paroxysms of delirium returned. The eye came back and sat upon the wall and the ceiling and the bureau and chairs, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another, while the braid of hair wound itself now around my head and then around that of Rex, who kept asking for Rena, and became so wild that the doctor said to me at last: “I think we must send for that young lady. She does more good than both of us.”
I was doubtful whether Rena would come again, but I wrote her a note telling her the state of things, and was delighted when about ten o’clock the next morning she walked into the house with Tom. He had taken the early train from Boston and stopped on his way from the station at Mrs. Parks’, where he heard from Rena all the particulars of Rex’s illness—of his looking in the well, of his hallucination with regard to the eye, and her confession to him.
“It was awful,” she said, “and at first my heart beat in my throat so I could scarcely talk, and I felt as if I was about to be electrocuted. But I am glad it is over, and he did not seem angry either, only hurt, at the trick put upon him. I am going with you this morning to see him.”
“But is it safe to go there so much? Aren’t you afraid of fever?” Tom asked.
Mrs. Parks had suggested the same thing. She was afraid, and was fumigating with sulphur candles and chloride of lime to kill the microbes which might stray her way until the house smelled like a vault. But Rena had no fear, and was soon on her way to the McPherson place with Tom, who was very anxious about Rex and curious to know how he would receive him. I was at my wits’ end when he came, and I allowed him to go in at once, hoping he might have a quieting effect upon my patient, who was making frantic efforts to catch the eye, or rather the eyes, for the room was full of them now, and his motions were like one brushing mosquitoes from the head and face.
“Hallo, Tom!” he said. “Glad to see you, but excuse me if I keep at it, driving them away. There was only one at first. I saw it in the well, you know—I was fool enough to look in—and it has been with me ever since. There’s a thousand here now. Ihave counted five hundred on the bed at once, winking and blinking and mocking me, and they are everywhere; shoo, shoo,” and he began to brush his hair and arms and face.
It was pitiful to see him, and Tom’s chin quivered as he looked at him fighting the imaginary eyes floating before him.
“Rex,” he said, sitting down upon the bed, “listen. There are no eyes here, and the one you saw in the mirror was a reflection of Irene herself standing by you in flesh and blood.”
“I know, I know,” Rex replied. “Somebody told me. Who was it? Sam, I believe. He saw her. She came up close and looked at me. It was a trick, a joke, a lie! I have been made the subject of a lot of late, and it hurt me some, and you, Tom, were in it, too!Et tu, Brute!we used to read at school, but I never thought I should one day be Cæsar!”
A glimmer of reason was asserting itself for a moment, and Tom’s eyes filled with tears as he said: “Yes, Rex, I was in it, and I am so sorry. We are all sorry. Rena most of all.”
At the mention of Rena, Rex’s manner changed at once.
“Yes, Rena,” he said, with a ring of pleasure in his voice, “Rena, with the little soft hands whichtake the eyes away. She can catch them! Where is she? I want her. She’s the girl, you know, the other was somebody else, very grand and tall and beautiful, and lives in Claremont instead of New York, and is not the one Sandy meant. That was Rena—your Rena, I want her.”
He was talking at random again, and Rena, who heard her name, went into the room.
“I am here,” she said, going up to him, while he took his hands from Tom and gave them to her.
There was no talk of eyes or hair or anything after Rena sat down beside him. He did not say much, but slept a long time, which was a gain, and we began to hope that the fever would reach the crisis at the end of a week instead of running longer, as we had at first feared. Rena stayed till night, and only left then because Tom insisted that she should go.
“I owe him something,” she said, “and I shall come every day till he is better,” and the next morning she was at her post, looking rather pale and hollow-eyed, but determined and brave.
She had brought Irene’s note received the evening before in the letter telling of Johnnie’s death.
“Don’t show it to him now. Wait till he can sense it,” Tom said.
He was taking the lead in the sick-room and was so strong and masterful that Rex continued to improve, and, greatly to our delight, a few days saw the breaking of the fever and the clearing of the mists which had clouded his brain.