Quarantine weighed, however, most heavily upon poor Grace Curtis. Rachel
had from the first insisted that she should be kept out of her room; and
the mother's piteous entreaty always implied that saddest argument, "Why
should I be deprived of you both in one day?" So Grace found herself
condemned to uselessness almost as complete as Ermine's. She could only
answer notes, respond to inquiries, without even venturing far enough
from the house to see Ermine, or take out the Temple children for a
walk. For indeed, Rachel's state was extremely critical.
The feverish misery that succeeded Lovedy's death had been utterly
crushing, the one load of self-accusation had prostrated her, but with
a restlessness of agony, that kept her writhing as it were in her
wretchedness; and then came the gradual increase of physical suffering,
bearing in upon her that she had caught the fatal disorder. To her sense
of justice, and her desire to wreak vengeance on herself, the notion
might be grateful; but the instinct of self-preservation was far
stronger. She could not die. The world here, the world to come, were all
too dark, too confused, to enable her to bear such a doom. She saw her
peril in her mother's face; in the reiterated visits of the medical
man, whom she no longer spurned; in the calling in of the Avoncester
physician; in the introduction of a professional nurse, and the strong
and agonizing measures to which she had to submit, every time with
the sensation that the suffering could not possibly be greater without
exceeding the powers of endurance.
Then arose the thought that with weakness she should lose all chance of
expressing a wish, and, obtaining pencil and paper, she began to write
a charge to her mother and sister to provide for Mary Morris; but in
the midst there came over her the remembrance of the papers that she had
placed in Mauleverer's hands--the title-deeds of the Burnaby Bargain; an
estate that perhaps ought to be bringing in as much as half the rental
of the property. It must be made good to the poor. If the title-deeds
had been sold to any one who could claim the property, what would be
the consequence? She felt herself in a mist of ignorance and perplexity;
dreading the consequences, yet feeling as if her own removal might
leave her fortune free to make up for them. She tried to scrawl an
explanation; but mind and fingers were alike unequal to the task, and
she desisted just as fresh torture began at the doctor's hands--torture
from which they sent her mother away, and that left her exhausted, and
despairing of holding out through a repetition.
And then--and then! "Tell me of my Saviour," the dying child had said;
and the drawn face had lightened at the words to which Rachel's oracles
declared that people attached crude or arbitrary meanings; and now she
hardly knew what they conveyed to her, and longed, as for something far
away, for the reality of those simple teachings--once realities, now
all by rote! Saved by faith! What was faith? Could all depend on a
last sensation? And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong
blindness and self-will, resulting in the agony of the innocent. Was
this ground of hope? She tried to think of progress and purification
beyond the grave; but this was the most speculative, insecure fabric of
all. There was no habit of trust to it--no inward conviction, no outward
testimony. And even when the extreme danger subsided, and Francis Temple
was known to be better, Rachel found that her sorrow was not yet
ended: for Conrade had been brought home with the symptoms of the
complaint--Conrade, the most beloved and loving of Fanny's little ones,
the only one who really remembered his father, was in exceeding, almost
hopeless peril, watched day and night by his mother and Miss Williams.