Although Belchamber had become a very different place from the home of
his childhood, it was still a relief to Sainty to get into the country.
It must be confessed that the parties with which Cissy delighted to fill
the house were extraordinarily unexacting in the attention they demanded
from their host, so that he was able, as in London, to lead very much
his own life, undisturbed by his wife or her guests. Except at dinner,
or in occasional passage meetings, as he slunk from the library to his
own sacred quarters in the western pavilion, he seldom met any of them.
Moreover, the young couple were, for the moment, nearly alone. Most of
the society which Lady Belchamber specially affected was either at Cowes
and Goodwood, or devoting a fortnight to the care of its property and
the reception of its schoolboys before the annual round of Scottish
visits. Sainty had been passingly surprised at Cissy’s decision to
forego a very gay house-party in Sussex, and return quietly to
Belchamber at the beginning of August. The young woman did not seem to
be in her accustomed health; indeed, she admitted she was quite done up,
and needed rest; there had even been a talk of ‘waters.’ She had begun
to be not quite herself before they left London, and then there had been
the curious incident of her fainting at her own party.
Quite early in May, before Lady Charmington’s unfortunate visit, Cissy
had announced her intention of giving some kind of entertainment, but
the difficulty of deciding on what form it should take, and the
impossibility of finding an evening when it would not interfere with
something else she wanted to do, had combined to defer the execution of
the plan till nearly the end of the season. She found it so much easier
to go to parties which other people had the trouble of arranging than to
take the trouble to arrange one for herself, that Sainty had begun to
hope the whole thing might fall through, when she suddenly fixed a date,
called in Lady Eccleston to assist her, and telegraphed to Roumania to
offer a fabulous sum to a celebrated violinist, who had not been heard
in England that summer. By eking out this star with the only two
expensive singers who had not yet left the opera, and rigorously
excluding from her invitation-list any one to whom it could be a
pleasure or excitement to be present, she managed to have a very
brilliant and select little gathering indeed, which, but for the
unfortunate _contretemps_ above mentioned, would have been an
unqualified success. The right dowagers were slumbering in the front
row, the right younger people were jostling and chattering in the
doorways, the talented performer was executing his most incredible
calisthenics, when Sainty, jammed into a far corner of one of the big
rooms, became aware of a bustle and commotion near the door of the
boudoir. People moved and heaved and whispered, and ceased to bestow
even a perfunctory attention on the music, which came rather abruptly to
an end. He saw Claude Morland elbow through the crowd with a bottle and
a glass, and some one near him said ‘Lady Belchamber has fainted.’
Among the many duties thrown unexpectedly on him by the catastrophe,
appeasing the anxiety of the guests and soothing the susceptibilities of
the artists, he was startled by the speech, accompanied by a meaning
pressure of the hand, with which Alice de Lissac took leave of him. ‘I
am _so_ glad,’ she whispered; ‘_now_, I feel sure all will come right.’
Enlightenment as to her meaning came most unexpectedly from his
mother-in-law next morning when he inquired of her after his wife’s
health. Lady Eccleston, who had been the last to depart the night
before, arrived at an amazingly early hour, and after a long visit to
her daughter was still able to appear in Sainty’s apartments almost
before he had finished his breakfast. She was evidently in high
good-humour and began by embracing him tenderly.
‘How did you find Cissy?’ Sainty asked. ‘I haven’t sent to ask after her
yet for fear of disturbing her. She seemed quite worn out last night; I
think she has been doing much too much.’
‘She is not _ill_,’ said Lady Eccleston, with a world of meaning. ‘I
will not allow that she is _ill_.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Sainty. ‘I thought she looked very seedy
last night, I must say.’
‘She will admit nothing,’ continued her ladyship. ‘I think I have told
you _how_ delicate and reticent she is on certain subjects. Even to
_me_, her mother, and you know we have always been like sisters, she
will tell nothing. Do you know what I think? she will tell no one till
she has told _you_. That’s it; you may be sure that’s it. She will run
no risk of your hearing it from any one but her. For heaven’s sake don’t
let her know I have even hinted at anything----’
‘What _do_ you mean, Lady Eccleston?’ Sainty gasped, a supposition of
which only he knew the full grotesqueness beginning to dawn on him.
‘Dear, sweet, innocent Sainty!’ cried Lady Eccleston, in a transport of
archness. ‘You and my girl are made for one another. You are like a pair
of child-lovers in a fairy-tale. I have told nothing, remember that; I
will tell nothing. I will not rob dear Cissy of the joy of announcing it
herself. Besides, as I say, I can only conjecture; she has absolutely
refused to admit it.’
‘Dear Lady Eccleston,’ cried Sainty, in great perturbation, ‘I can’t
pretend to misunderstand you; but, believe me, I think you are wrong. I
am sure--I am _almost_ sure--it cannot be as you suspect.’
Lady Eccleston shook her head and pursed her lips mysteriously. ‘A
mother is not deceived,’ she said. ‘But recollect I have told you
nothing. Cissy would never forgive me. I will not even congratulate you
till _you_ tell _me_. Meanwhile I shan’t breathe a word, not a word.
Trust me’; and she again folded her son-in-law to her heart. ‘It was
the one thing wanting to our happiness,’ burst from her, as it were
involuntarily, as she hurried away, leaving Sainty too much bewildered
to protest.
Two days later they went into the country. Cissy was certainly not
feeling well. She asked Sainty if he would mind going sooner than had
been settled; she thought rest and country air would set her up. No, she
wouldn’t see a doctor; there was nothing wrong with her. ‘I’m just
knocked up with being on the go, morning, noon, and night, for months.’
‘Your mother suggested the weirdest explanation,’ said Sainty.
Cissy flushed crimson and then grew so pale that he feared she was going
to repeat the performance of the night before.
‘Mamma really is a bigger fool than I thought,’ she said hotly. ‘I
didn’t think she would have had the idiotcy to carry that nonsense to
_you_. What did you say?’
‘What could I say? I told her it was impossible, but she would listen to
nothing.’
‘Of course it’s impossible! no one should know that better than _you_.’
On the afternoon of his first day at Belchamber Sainty ordered his
little cart and drove as in duty bound to pay his respects to his
mother. He had not seen Lady Charmington since she had left his house in
wrath, and though he had written to her several times he had received
only the briefest and coldest answers. It was not, therefore, with any
very pleasing anticipations of the coming interview that he set out to
visit her.
It was one of those perfect, cool autumnal days which English people
mistake for summer. The open spaces of the park were dappled with
pleasant temperate sunlight like the flanks of the deer that fed there.
Hundreds of rabbits squatted in the familiar glades or tilted themselves
hastily into covert as he passed. Never had his home looked lovelier or
more peaceful, or appealed more strongly to him. The woods and coppices
called to him with a thousand voices, and his poor heart, starved of
all human emotion, answered as only the lonely and despised among her
children can answer to the great cry of Nature the universal mother.
Then, as he drove along the smooth green alleys, there came to him the
recollection of his brother and of the woman his brother had married.
Ever since his visit to them Sainty had thought much about his
sister-in-law, and had striven in his own mind to do her justice;
terrible as she was to him æsthetically, he was forced to admit that she
was a better sort than her husband. She did think of her children and do
her duty by them according to her lights, whereas Arthur thought of no
one but himself. After all, were Cissy’s ideals in life, except
superficially, much less vulgar than Lady Arthur’s? He sometimes
wondered if it were not better to have been frankly improper before
marriage and settle down into an irreproachable wife and mother, than to
be a frivolous little worldling, refusing to live with her husband, and
lending numberless occasions to the tongue of scandal.
Argue as he would, and rigidly impartial as he strove to make his mental
attitude, the thought of his successors poisoned the beauty of the day
for him and blotted out the sunshine. It was vain to tell himself that
Cynthia’s standard of personal conduct was higher than Cecilia’s. Her
ghastly veneer of gentility shocked his taste more than even her
mother’s frank vulgarity or Arthur’s callous selfishness. To think of
her and her shiny-faced babies at Belchamber was to profane his most
sacred associations.
He soon found that he need not have doubted his mother’s welcome. She
received him with what, for her, was almost cordiality. On the rare
occasions when Lady Charmington assumed a staid and humorless jocosity,
she was wont to affect a Scottish accent and manner of speech, and
Sainty noted with surprise this mark of unusual hilarity. ‘Come ben the
house, man,’ she remarked; ‘the sight of ye is good for sair een.’
‘How pretty you have made everything,’ said Sainty. ‘Your borders are
lovely. There is no one like you for a garden, mother.’
Lady Charmington looked round her with a certain pride. ‘Yes, I think
I’ve improved the place,’ she said. ‘Do ye know these late-flowering
delphiniums? this is the only kind that blooms as late as this. I
thought at one time my hollyhocks were going to have the disease, but
I’ve brought them through it.’
‘They are lovely; and how beautiful these roses are.’
‘That’s the pink Ayrshire; it’s not so common as the white. You know the
big bush in the corner of the west wing, I brought it from Scotland with
me soon after I married; these are some cuttings from it I took a few
years ago, and last autumn I moved them here; haven’t they grown?’ Thus
talking on safe subjects, they entered the house, where Sainty’s
admiration was claimed and freely given for various ingenious
arrangements and improvements.
‘And how’s Cissy?’ asked Lady Charmington presently, a certain subdued
excitement in her look and manner.
‘It is very good of you, mother, to ask after her so kindly,’ Sainty
answered. ‘She doesn’t seem to me very well; she’s a little knocked up
with all her gaieties, I think, but she won’t admit there’s anything
wrong with her which a little rest and country air won’t set right.’
‘Wrong with her! certainly not; what should ail her?’ cried Lady
Charmington, with the same curious air of meaning more than she said.
‘I hope,’ Sainty began awkwardly, ‘that you won’t remember her rudeness
and bad behaviour to you last May; it would be terribly painful to me to
have you on bad terms with one another. I quite admit she behaved
shockingly to you, but I hope you will overlook it. I feel sure if you
will come and see her you’ll find her ready to meet you more than
half-way.’
‘I bear no malice,’ said Lady Charmington, with bewildering good-humour;
‘and indeed I could find it in my heart to forgive her at this moment
worse things than a little incivility to myself.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ Sainty said; ‘but why specially at this
moment?’ He was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
Lady Charmington leaned forward and looked sharply in his face.
‘Is it possible you really don’t know?’ she said. ‘You are the queerest
couple I ever came across. I made sure you had come here to announce it
to me, and I didn’t want to take the wind out of your sails by letting
you see that I knew it already.’
‘Know what? announce what?’ cried Sainty. He was beginning to divine his
mother’s meaning; his mind reverted to his conversation with Lady
Eccleston. Why did all these women persist in mocking him with
congratulations on the impossible as though it were an accomplished
fact? ‘Have you heard from Lady Eccleston?’ he asked, with apparent
irrelevance.
Lady Charmington pounced on the implied admission.
‘Oho! So you are not quite as ignorant as you pretend! But why should
you try to keep it from _me_, when you must know it is the bit of news
which it would give me more pleasure to hear than anything in the
world?’
‘Dear mother,’ said Sainty, ‘do you suppose if I had any such news to
tell as you seem to imagine, that I shouldn’t have rushed to you with
it? But it’s not so. It can’t be so.’
‘But why shouldn’t it be so?’ asked Lady Charmington.
‘Believe me, it’s impossible,’ Sainty was beginning, and then
recollected that he couldn’t tell his mother _why_ it was impossible. ‘I
don’t know what’s come to everybody,’ he said lamely.
‘Why did you ask if I had heard from Lady Eccleston? It shows you
guessed what I meant.’
‘Because she too has run away with the same idea, and when I told her
that she must be mistaken, she only became more positive.’
‘You see,’ said Lady Charmington triumphantly, ‘her own mother thinks
so, and _she_ ought to know.’
‘But really, really, I feel sure you are all wrong. I don’t want you to
build on this, mother, because I know what a disappointment it will be
to you.’
‘Do you mean to say your wife is not going to have a baby?’
‘I certainly think not; she said herself her mother had been talking
nonsense. Did she tell it to you as a fact, in so many words?’
‘Lady Eccleston’s style is sometimes a little involved, but I certainly
took her letter to mean---- Oh yes--there’s not a doubt of it; she
_can’t_ have meant anything else.’ Lady Charmington turned over a pile
of letters on her writing-table, and selecting one began to mumble
through it. ‘Um, um, London emptying fast, just on the wing myself,
cannot go till I’ve found some one to read to my dear blind ... um, um,
um. Ah! here it is: “I cannot refrain from giving you a hint of the
great news. I know how it will rejoice your heart. But don’t betray me
till the dear children tell you themselves. I should not say a word
about it, only they are both so absurdly reticent and sensitive; it is
quite possible they may neither of them mention it. Dear Cissy was
almost angry with me; she tried to make out I was mistaken, but a
mother’s eye! you and I know when....” Well, we needn’t go into all
that; but you see, her mother’s convinced.’
‘Well,’ said Sainty, ‘I can only set on the other side that Cissy denies
it herself.’
‘How about her being taken ill at the party?’ It was evident that Lady
Eccleston had gone into details.
‘People may faint without being in that condition,’ protested Sainty;
‘no one should know that better than I. Believe me, you are all building
too much on that momentary loss of consciousness, which may as likely as
not have come from tight lacing.’
Lady Charmington shook her head impatiently. ‘Her mother says she has
never been known to faint before in her life; and any one can see with
half an eye she has always laced....’
After this the conversation languished perceptibly. It was obviously
futile to go on discussing the prospects of an heir, when the parties
principally concerned agreed in denying that there _were_ any
prospects. Lady Charmington, ‘convinced against her will,’ was very much
‘of the same opinion still’; but balked of the topic on which she burned
to dilate, she resolutely declined every other which her son brought
forward. Sainty’s well-meant efforts to extract information on local or
farming subjects were killed by the stony indifference she opposed to
them, so that he presently took his leave, without obtaining more than a
very qualified and doubtful agreement to his suggestion that she should
come and see Cissy.
At first the pertinacity of their two mothers in attributing miraculous
offspring to Cissy and himself had seemed only a peculiarly galling
mystification. Sainty never knew at just what moment a horrible solution
of the puzzle had begun to suggest itself to him as possible. Had he
fought against the conviction from the first, or did it come to him
slowly and insidiously as his mother marshalled the reasons for her
belief against his repeated denials? He could put his finger on no point
in time when the suspicion had flashed into his brain; but by the time
he reached his own door again, it seemed to him that there had been no
hour of his unhappy married life when this terror had not sat grinning
behind every trivial incident. He determined to see his wife, to know
the worst at once. He asked for her, but learned she was out. ‘Her
ladyship had gone driving late, after tea, and had not come in yet.’ He
had no chance of speech with her through the evening, but when at last
she went to her room, he followed boldly, hardly waiting for the answer
to his knock before entering the room.
Cissy had thrown herself on the sofa, and the loose sides of the
tea-gown she had worn at dinner had a little fallen back. At the sound
of the opening door she started up, and drew her draperies so swiftly
about her that Sainty could not be sure if he had noticed or only
imagined a slight change in her figure.
‘You!’ she cried.
‘Yes,’ he said, in as steady a voice as he could. ‘I want to speak to
you, and I could find no other chance of seeing you alone.’
Their glances crossed and he read in her eyes a confirmation of his
worst suspicions. Still he must be sure, must hear it from herself. She
had looked startled, almost frightened, as she faced him, then her face
took on a dogged sulky expression.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘I went to see my mother this afternoon,’ Sainty began.
‘Your mother,’ Cissy broke in. ‘Oh! _she’s_ been making mischief.’
‘On the contrary, she was all amiability and delight, ready to make it
up with you, to forgive everything “at this moment,” as she said.’
‘That’s very kind of her; but why?’
‘She was bursting with congratulations and excitement; she had had a
letter from your mother.’
Lady Belchamber muttered something very unfilial about her parent. ‘And
what did _you_ say?’ she inquired.
‘I? What _could_ I say? I said they were both mistaken. That you had
told me it was not true; and of course it isn’t--it _can’t_ be; I don’t
need to be told that.’
He was pleading against his own certainty; from the time he came into
the room, he knew what he should hear before he left it. Yet with his
whole heart he was begging her still, if it were possible, to deny the
shame that had come upon his house. He stood mute and suppliant before
her, and she looked at him almost pityingly. Then with a little
discouraged gesture she turned away and sat down again on the sofa.
‘It _is_ true,’ she said quietly. ‘You may as well know it first as
last. In any case I couldn’t conceal it much longer; and now that mamma
has guessed it, she will have told it to at least fifty people already.
She little knows what she’s doing,’ she added, with a hard laugh that
jarred on Sainty’s overstretched nerves.
He had been sure of it, had known it. Yet now that the words were
spoken, that the fact confronted him, admitted, undeniable, irrevocable,
he staggered with the blow.
‘You are going to have a child?’ he gasped.
She nodded, and for all answer threw back the covering she had pulled
across herself.
‘But it is not mine.’
‘Yours!’ impatiently. ‘How should it be?’
‘Good God!’
There was a silence. Sainty moved restlessly about, as agitated as
though it were he who was making the confession. Cissy was far the more
self-possessed of the two. She sat upon her sofa watching his agonised
motions with a faintly inquisitive distaste, as a person of imperfect
sympathies might observe the contortions of some creature he had
unwittingly injured.
‘I suppose,’ she said presently, ‘you want to know whose it is?’
‘No, no!’ cried Sainty shudderingly. ‘That least of all. For God’s sake
don’t tell me!’ and he made a step towards her, as though he would have
choked back the name he feared to hear.
Cissy stared. ‘Queer!’ she ejaculated.
There was another pause. A clock struck midnight, and was echoed loudly
or faintly by others near or distant. Sainty counted the strokes, and
was conscious of irritation when one began before another finished and
embroiled his counting.
It was again the woman who spoke first, and the question was
characteristic, severely practical.
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘I don’t know--I can’t think. Give me time--give me time to think.’
Cissy looked at him with undisguised contempt. ‘_I_ should know what to
do,’ she said. After a while she added, ‘Of course I can’t stay here
now.’
‘I don’t know--I don’t know,’ Sainty kept repeating. ‘We must do nothing
in a hurry. Think of all it means, all the consequences.’
Cissy shrugged her shoulders. ‘It seems rather late for that,’ she
remarked. ‘Besides, we can’t keep it to ourselves indefinitely, you
know.’
‘At least give me to-night to get my ideas into some sort of order,’
Sainty pleaded. ‘You can’t be surprised if this is rather a shock to me,
can you?’ he added, almost apologetically.
Cissy laughed. ‘I wonder if any man ever took this announcement in just
the same way?’ she said.