reclining on the pillows of an invalid chair was arthur bohun, looking as yellow as gold, recovering from an attack of jaundice. the day of james bohun's funeral it had poured with rain; and arthur, standing at the grave, had caught a chill. this had terminated in the jaundice--his unhappy state of mind no doubt doing its part towards bringing on the malady. he was recovering now. sir nash, at whose house he lay, was everything that was kind.
madam was kind also: at least she made a great profession of being so. her object in life just now was to get her son to marry miss dallory. madam cared no more for her son arthur or his welfare than she did for richard north; but she was shrewd enough to foresee that the source, whence her large supplies of money had hitherto been drawn, was now dried up: and she hoped to get supplies out of arthur for the future. marrying an heiress, wealthy as miss dallory, would wonderfully increase his power to help her. moreover, she wished to be effectually relieved from that horrible nightmare that haunted her still--the possibility of his marrying ellen adair.
so madam laid her plans--as it was in her scheming nature ever to be laying them--and contrived to bring miss dallory, at that time in london with her aunt, to sir nash bohun's for a few days' visit when arthur was recovering. the young lady was there now: and matilda north was there; and they both spent a good part of every day with arthur; and sir nash made much of mary dallory, partly because he really liked her, and partly because he thought there was a probability that she would become arthur's wife. during his illness, captain bohun had had time for reflection: not only time, but calmness, in the lassitude it brought to him mentally and physically: and he began to see his immediate way somewhat clearer. to give no explanation to the two ladies at eastsea, to whom he was acting, as he felt, so base a part, was the very worst form of cowardice; and, though he could not explain to ellen adair, he was now anxious to do so to mrs. cumberland. accordingly the first use he made of his partially-recovered health, was to ask for writing materials and write her a note in very shaky characters. he spoke of his serious illness, stated that certain "untoward circumstances" had occurred to intercept his plans, but that as soon as he was sufficiently well to travel he should beg of her to appoint a time when she could allow him a private conference.
the return post brought him a letter from ellen. rather to his consternation. ellen assumed--not unnaturally, as the reader will find--that the sole cause of his mysterious absence was illness; that he had been ill from the first, and unable to travel. it ran as follows:--
"my dearest arthur,
"i cannot express to you what my feelings are this morning; so full of joy, yet full of pain. oh i cannot tell you what the past two or three weeks have been to me; looking back, it almost seems a wonder that i lived through them. for i thought--i will not say here what i thought, and perhaps i could not say, only that you were never coming again; and that it was agony to me, worse than death. and to hear now that you could not come: that the cause of your silence and absence has been dangerous illness, brings to me a great sorrow and shame. oh arthur, my dearest, forgive me! forgive also my writing to you thus freely; but it almost seems to me as though you were already my husband. had you been called away only half-an-hour later you would have been, and perhaps even might have had me with you in your illness.
"i should like to write pages and pages, but you may be too ill yet to read very much, and so i will say no more. may god watch over you and bring you to health again.
"ever yours, arthur, yours only, with the great love of my heart,
"ellen adair."
and captain arthur bohun, in spite of the cruel fate that had parted them, pressed the letter to his heart, and the sweet name, ellen adair--sweeter than any he would ever hear again--to his lips, and shed tears of anguish over it in the feebleness induced by illness.
they might take mary dallory to his room as much as they pleased; and matilda might exert her little wiles in praising her, and madam hers to leave them "accidentally" together; but his heart was too full of another, and of its own bitter pain, to have room for as much as a responsive thought to mary dallory.
"arthur is frightfully languid and apathetical!" spoke miss north one day in a burst of resentment. "i'm sure he is quite rude to me and mary: he lets us sit by him for an hour at a time, and never speaks."
"consider how ill he has been--and is," remonstrated sir nash.
mrs. cumberland's span of life was drawing into a very narrow space: and it might be that she was beginning to suspect this. for some months she had been growing inwardly weaker; but the weakness had for a week or two been visibly and rapidly increasing. captain bohun's unaccountable behaviour had tried her--for ellen's sake. she was responsible to mr. adair for the welfare of his daughter, and the matter was a source of daily and hourly annoyance to her. when this second tardy note arrived, she considered it, in one sense, a satisfactory explanation; in another, not so: since, if captain bohun had been too ill to write himself, why did he not get some one else to write to her and say so? however, she was willing to persuade herself that all would be right: and she told ellen, without showing her the note, that captain bohun had been dangerously ill, unable to come or write. hence ellen's return letter.
but, apart from the progress of the illness in itself, nothing had done mrs. cumberland so much harm as the news of her daughter-in-law's death. it had been allowed to reach her abruptly, without the smallest warning. i suppose there is something in our common nature that urges us to impart sad tidings to others. dinah, jelly's friend and underling, was no exception to this rule. on the day after the death, she sat down and indited a letter to her fellow-servant, ann, at eastsea, in which she detailed the short progress of mrs. rane's illness, and her strangely sudden death. ann, before she had well mastered the cramped lines, ran with white face to her mistress; and miss adair afterwards told her that she ought to have known better. that it was too great a shock for mrs. cumberland in her critical state, the girl in her repentance very soon saw. mrs. cumberland asked for the letter, and scarcely had it out of her hand for many hours. dead! apparently from no sufficient cause; for the fever had lasted only a day, dinah said, and had gone again. mrs. cumberland, in her bewilderment, began actually to think the whole thing was a fable.
not for two or three days did she receive confirmation from dr. rane. of course the doctor did not know or suppose that any one else would be writing to eastsea; and he was perhaps willing to spare his mother the news as long as he could do so. he shortly described the illness--saying that he, himself, had entertained very little hope from the first, from the severity of the fever. but all this did not help to soothe mrs. cumberland; and in the two or three weeks that afterwards went on, she faded palpably. little wonder the impression, that she was growing worse, made its way to dallory.
