Part 26 (1/2)

Fay shook her head over this part of Erle's letter. He was an incorrigible flirt, she was afraid; but she missed him very much. The old Hall seemed very quiet without Erle's springy footsteps and merry whistle, and somehow Fay was a little quieter too.

For a change was pa.s.sing over Hugh's Wee Wifie in those early spring days.

With the new hope there came a new and tender expression on her sweet face.

She grew less child-like and more womanly, and day by day there grew a certain modest dignity that became her well. Hugh was very gentle with her, and careful to guard her from all imprudence; but life was very difficult to him just then, and he could not always restrain his growing irritability.

He was ill, and yet unwilling to own anything was amiss. He scoffed at the idea that his nerves were disorganized; and with the utmost recklessness seemed bent on ruining his fine const.i.tution.

His restlessness and inward struggles were making him thin and haggard; still any fatigue was better than inaction, he thought.

Often, after a long day spent in riding over the Redmond and Wyngate estates, he would set out again, often fasting, to walk across plowed lands and through miry lanes to visit some sick laborer, and then sit up half the night in his solitary study.

Years afterward he owned that he never looked back on this part of his life without an inward shudder.

What would have become of him, he said, if the hand of Providence had not laid him low before he had succeeded in ruining himself, body and soul?

No one but Hugh knew how often he had yielded to the temptation to drown his inward miseries in pernicious drugs; how in those solitary vigils, while his innocent child-wife was sleeping peacefully like an infant, his half-maddened brain conjured up delirious fancies that seemed to people the dark library with haunting faces.

But he never meant to harm himself really; he would say in his sober daylight reflections he was only so very wretched. Margaret's influence had always kept him pure, and he was not the man to find pleasure in any dissipation.

No, he would not harm himself; but he wanted more to do. If he could represent his county, for example; but he had lost his seat last election to his neighbor Colonel Dacre! If he could travel; if Fay would only spare him! And then he shook his head as he thought of his unborn child.

”You look so ill, Hugh,” Fay would say with tears in her eyes when he came up to wish her good-bye, ”I wish you would stay with me a little.”

But Hugh would only give a forced laugh, and say that his ”Wee Wifie was becoming more fanciful than ever, and that he should not know what to do with her if she went on like this;” and then, kissing her hastily, and unloosening the little hands from his neck, he would go out of the room pretending to whistle.

But one evening, when they were together in the library, he fell asleep while she was talking to him, and looked so strange and flushed that Fay got frightened and tried to wake him.

”Come, Hugh,” she said, softly, ”it is eleven o'clock, and I can not leave you like this, and I am so tired and sleepy, dear;” and she knelt down and put her hand under his head, and stroked back the hair from his hot forehead. But Hugh only muttered something inaudibly, and turned his face away.

And Fay, watching him anxiously, felt her heart sink with some undefined fear, and presently rang for his valet.

”Saville,” she said, as the man entered the room, ”I do not know what is the matter with Sir Hugh to-night, he sleeps so heavily and looks so strange. If it were not so late, and I were sure that he would not mind it, I would send for Doctor Martin.”

”Nonsense,” exclaimed her husband, drowsily, for this threat of sending for the doctor had roused him effectually, and he managed to sit up and look at them.

”Why, what a white shaking child you look, you are not fit to be up so late, Fay; why don't you take more care of yourself.”

”I was so frightened, dear,” she whispered; ”I could not bear to leave you. I am sure you are ill, Hugh; do let Saville help you to bed.”

”Oh, is that Saville? I thought--I thought--well, never mind. There is nothing the matter with me, Saville, is there?”

”No, Sir Hugh; only it is late, and I expect you are tired, as my lady said.”

”But she said I was ill”--very querulously; ”I have never had a day's illness in my life, have I, Saville? Mrs. Heron will know; ask Mrs.

Heron--well, I think I may as well go to bed and have my sleep out.”

And the next day he reiterated the same thing, that there was nothing the matter with him, nothing; only they had not called him at the usual time, and he had slept late; but he had no appet.i.te, and did not care to rise.

It was foolish to have tired himself out so, he owned. But if Fay were good and would not scold him, she might sit with him and read something amusing. But he did not tell her, or Saville either, that he had tried to dress himself and had fallen back half fainting on the bed, or of the strange horrible feelings that were creeping over him, and that made him dread to be alone. Only Fay was very disappointed that he did not seem to hear anything she read; or remember a word of it. It was the shooting pain in his head, he told her; and then he laughed in a way that was hardly mirthful, and said he would try to sleep.

But that night he never closed his eyes, and yet the next day he would not allow Fay to send for the doctor, though she begged piteously for permission. Doctors were old women, he said, and Dr. Martin especially. It was only the pain in his head that kept him awake and made him so feverish; but toward the evening his eyes began to s.h.i.+ne beautifully, and he grew quite lively and talkative.