“Clara?” questioned Thomas. “Please don’t make a long story of it.”
“Yes, Tom. She is in bed; she is very bad—the doctor is afraid of tuberculosis—of the brain.—I can hardly speak the words. Here is the letter Tiburtius wrote me, and enclosed another for Mother, which we are to give her when we have prepared her a little. It tells the same story. And there is this second enclosure, to Mother, from Clara herself—written in pencil, in a shaky hand. And Tiburtius wrote that she herself said they were the last she should write, for it seems the sad thing is she makes no effort to live. She was always longing for Heaven—” finished Frau Permaneder, and wiped her eyes.
The Senator walked at her side, his hands behind his back, his head bowed.
“You are so quiet, Tom. But you are right—what is there to say? Just now, too, when Christian lies ill in Hamburg—”
For this was, in fact, the state of things. Christian’s “misery” in the left side had increased so much of late that it had become actual pain, severe enough to make him forget all smaller woes. He was quite helpless, and had written to his mother from London that he was coming home, for her to take care of him. He quit his situation in London and started off; but at Hamburg had been obliged to take to his bed; the doctor diagnosed his ailment as rheumatism of the joints, and he had been removed from his hotel to a hospital. Any further journey was for the time impossible. There he lay, and dictated to his attendant letters that betrayed extreme depression.
“Yes,” said the Senator, quietly. “It seems as if one thing just followed on another.”
She put her arm for an instant across his shoulders.
“But you musn’t give way, Tom. This is no time for you to be down-hearted. You need all your courage—”
“Yes, God knows I need it.”
37
