put her hand in her pocket and produce one then and there.
"Call Tony in to me. Tony," she said, "you're an ass; but not such an
ass as I thought you were."
"Good song, isn't it, grandmother?" he chuckled.
"Don't interrupt me. I said you were only not such an ass as I thought.
You're still an ass. Your wife isn't. You understand what I mean?
Produce an heir. Now I must go to bed." She swept out of the room like a
swallow from under the eaves of a house.
On the way back to Clare, Bella and Connie could not contain their
delight at the success Dorothy had made with their grandmother.
Tompkins, the Chatfield butler, had confided in Connie just before she
left that her ladyship had been heard to hum on entering her bedroom--an
expression of superfluous good temper in which she had not indulged
within his memory. The old lady was always cross at going to bed,
probably because she could not wheel it about like her chair. Nor was
grandmother the only victim to Dorothy's charm: Uncle Chat had been full
of compliments; Charles and the girls had declared she was a stunner;
Aunt Jane had corroborated Tompkins's story about humming.
The dowager, who always came away from Chatfield with a sense of renewed
youth, though sometimes, indeed, feeling like a naughty little girl, was
almost sprightly on the drive back to Clare. She had expected to be
roundly scolded by her mother, and here she was going away with her
pockets full of nuts, as it were; the little anxieties of daily life
dropped from her shoulders, and when the drag met a very noisy motor in
a narrow stretch of road she sat perfectly still and listened to the
coachman's soothing clicks with profound trust in his ability to calm
the horses.
"By the way, I hope you won't mind the suggestion, dear," she said to
Dorothy, "but I think it would be nice to arrange a little dinner-party
for Saturday night--just our particular neighbors, you know--Mr. and
Mrs. Kingdon, Mr. and Mrs. Beadon, Mr. Hemming the curate, Doctor Lane,
and Mr. Greenish of Cherrington Cottage."
Tony groaned.
"What could be nicer?" said Dorothy. "But...."
"You're going to say it sounds rather sudden. Yes--well, it will be
sudden. But it struck me that it would be much nicer if we were a little
sudden. You see, your wedding was rather sudden, and our neighbors will
appreciate such a mark of intimacy. No doubt the Kingdons and the
Beadons will have called this afternoon, and I thought that if you don't
object I would send out the invitations myself and make it a sort of
wedding breakfast. I know it all sounds very muddled, but my
inspirations nearly always turn out well. I should like to feel on
Sunday that we were all old friends. Besides, if you're really going to
hunt on Monday, it will be nice for you to meet Mr. Kingdon, who is
master of the Horley."
"I think it's a delightful idea," Dorothy exclaimed. "Thank you so much
for suggesting it."
"This is going to be a terrible winter and spring," Clarehaven groaned.
"Tony, please don't be discouraging," said his mother. "I'm feeling so
optimistic since our visit to Chatfield. Why, I'm even hoping to
reconcile Mr. Kingdon and Mr. Beadon. Not, of course, that they're open
enemies, but I should like the squire to appreciate the rector's
beautiful character, and it seems such a pity that a few lighted candles
should blind him to it. Mr. Kingdon will take in Dorothy; the rector
will take me; you, Tony dear--please don't look so cross--ought to take
in Mrs. Kingdon, who's a great admirer of yours--such a nice woman,
Dorothy dear, with a most unfortunate inability to roll her r's--it's so
sad, I think. Then the doctor will take in Mrs. Beadon; Mr. Greenish,
Arabella; and Mr. Hemming, Connie."
"I like Tommy Hemming," said Connie. "He's a sport."
"I should call him a freak," Clarehaven muttered.
"We ought to do some riding to-morrow and Friday," his sister went on,
quite unconcerned by his opinion of the curate. "I think Dorothy ought
to ride Mignonette on Monday. She's a perfect ripper--a chestnut."
Dorothy liked the name, which reminded her of her own hair, and
certainly had she chosen for herself she would have chosen a chestnut
for the meet at Five Tree Farm. The dowager's forecast was right--both
the Kingdons and the Beadons had called upon the new countess, and the
dowager pattered up-stairs to her bird-bright room to send out
invitations for Saturday.
"You see what you've let yourself in for," said Tony to his wife that
night. "However, you'll be as fed up as I am when you've had one or two
of these neighborly little dinners. And look here, Doodles, seriously I
don't think you ought to hunt. I'm not saying you can't ride, but you
ought to wait till next season, at any rate. You may have a nasty
accident, and--well, yes, I'm the one to say it, after all--you may make
a priceless fool of yourself."
"Do you think so?" Dorothy asked. "Do you think I made a priceless fool
of myself when I sang to your grandmother this afternoon? If I can carry
that off, I can certainly ride after a fox. Kiss me. You mean well, but
you don't yet know what I can do."
A former Anthony kissed away kingdoms and provinces; this Anthony kissed
away doubts and fears and scruples as easily.
Dorothy dressed herself very simply for the neighborly little
dinner-party. She decided that white would be the best sedative for any
tremors felt by the neighbors at the prospect of finding their society
led by an actress; and she made up her mind to cast a special spell upon
the M. F. H. and so guard herself from the consequences of any mistake
she might make at the meet. There was nothing about Mr. Kingdon that
diverged the least from the typical fox-hunting squire that for two
hundred years has been familiar to the people of Great Britain. His neck
was thick and red; his voice came in gusts; and he recounted as good
stories of his own the jokes in _Punch_ of the week before last. What
deeper sense in Squire Kingdon was outraged by the rector's ritualism it
would be hard to say, for his body did not appear to be the temple of
anything except food and drink; perhaps, like the bull that he so much
resembled, an imperfectly understood nervous system was wrought upon by
certain colors. The congregation of Great Cherrington would scarcely
have been stirred from their lethargic worship to see the squire with
lowered head charge up the aisle, when Mr. Beadon began to play the
picador with a colored stole, and toss Mr. Beadon over his shoulders
into the font. Mrs. Kingdon was to her husband as a radish is to a
beet-root. The weather is a bad lady's maid, and the weather had made of
Mrs. Kingdon's complexion something that ought to have infuriated her
husband as much as Mr. Beadon's colored stoles. In spite of her hard and
highly colored appearance, she was a mild enough woman, given to deep
sighs in pauses of the conversation, when she was probably thinking
about the rolling of her r's and regretting that three of her children
had inherited this impotency of palate or tongue.
"We must all pull together," she said to Dorothy, who expressed her
anxiety to find herself lugging at the same rope as Mrs. Kingdon against
whatever team opposed them.
"Very true, Mrs. Kingdon," the rector observed. "I wish the squire was
always of your opinion."
"Mr. Beadon can never forget that he is a clergyman," whispered Mrs.
Kingdon when the rector passed on.
Yet the monotone of Mr. Beadon's clericality had once been illuminated
when he had broken that vow of celibacy to which he had attached such
importance in order to marry Mrs. Beadon. In the confusion of the Sabine
rape Mrs. Beadon might have found herself wedded, but that any man in
cold blood and with many women to choose from should have deliberately
chosen Mrs. Beadon passed normal comprehension. Her husband treated her
in the same way as he treated the crucifix from Oberammergau that he
kept in a triptych by his bed. He would admire her, respect her, almost
worship her, and then abruptly he would shut her up with a little click.
Mrs. Beadon was much thinner even than her husband; while she was
eating, the upper part of her chest resembled a musical box, her throat
a violin played pizzicato, the accumulated music of which expressed
itself during digestion in remote trills and far-off scales. She was
seldom vocal in conversation, but voluble in psalms and hymns; she
performed many kind actions such as blowing little boys' noses on the
way to school, and though she did not blow Dorothy's nose, she squeezed
her hand and confided that the news of Lord Clarehaven's marriage had
meant a great deal to her.
"Oh, so much!" she had time to repeat before her husband closed the
doors of the triptych.
Mr. Hemming, the curate, was a muscular and, did not his clerical collar
forbid one to suppose so, a completely fatuous young man. When he was
pleased about anything he said, "Oh, cheers!" When he was displeased he
shook his head in silence. Mr. Beadon told Dorothy that he was a loyal
churchman, and certainly once in the course of the evening he came to
the rescue of his rector, who had been pinned in a corner of the room,
by asking the squire, why he wore a pink coat when he hunted. The squire
replied that such was the custom for an M. F. H., and Mr. Hemming, with
a guffaw, said that it was also the custom for a fisher of men to wear
sporting colors. This irreverent attempt to put fishing on an equality
with fox-hunting naturally upset the squire, and the dowager's hopes, of
an early reconciliation between him and the rector were destroyed.
Of the other two guests, Doctor Lane was a pleasant, elderly gentleman
whose chief pride was that he still read _The Lancet_ every week. One
felt in talking to him that a man who still read _The Lancet_ after
twenty-five years of Cherrington evinced a sensitiveness to medical
progress that was laudable and peculiar. He was a widower without
children and devoted what little leisure he had to the study of newts,
salamanders, and olms; a pair of olms, which a friend had brought him
back from Carniola, he kept in a subterranean tank in his garden,
enhancing thereby in the eyes of the village his reputation as a
physician. The last guest, Mr. Greenish, was a well-groomed bachelor of
about forty, one of that class who suddenly appear for no obvious reason
in remote country villages and devote themselves to gardening or other
forms of outdoor life, who are useful about the parish, and who often
play billiards well. They may be criminals hiding from justice; more
probably they are people who have inherited money late in life from
aunts, and who, having long dreamed of retiring into the country, do so
at the first opportunity. Mr. Greenish did not hunt, but he was a good
shot, and Clarehaven found him the least intolerable of his immediate
neighbors.
It cannot be said that Dorothy found it difficult to shine at such a
party; indeed, she was such a success that when the evening came to an
end no doubt remained in the dowager's mind that to-morrow morning
Little Cherrington church would have double its usual congregation to
see the new countess. In fact, Mr. Kingdon was so much taken with her
that he announced his own intention of worshiping at Little Cherrington,
and the rector regretted that he had not known of this beforehand in
order that he might have seized the opportunity, in the absence of the
squire, to test the congregation of Great Cherrington with a linen
chasuble. As a matter of fact, on the way home he plotted with Mr.
Hemming to do this, and was successful in passing off the vestment on
the congregation as a flaw in the curate's surplice.
Dorothy looked particularly attractive that Sunday in her coat and skirt
of lavender box-cloth, for the fashion of the moment was one that well
showed off a figure like hers. The rector's sermon on a text from the
Song of Solomon alluded with voluptuous imagery to the romance of the
married state, and, being entirely unintelligible to the congregation,
was considered round the parishes to be one of the best sermons he had
ever preached. If only to-morrow, thought Dorothy, when she walked out
of the churchyard through a crowd of uncovered rustics, she could leave
the hunting-field as triumphantly. Her rides on the preceding days with
Clarehaven and the girls had been successful. They had all congratulated
her, and any lingering anxiety in her husband's mind seemed to have
passed away. As the moment drew near, however, Dorothy began to be
nervous about breaches of hunting etiquette, and she spent Sunday
afternoon in turning over the pages of bound volumes of _Punch_ in order
to extract from the weekly hunting joke hints what not to do. A
succession of irate M. F. H.'s, purple in the face and shaking crops at
presumptuous cockneys, haunted her dreams that night; when she woke to a
moist gray morning, for the first time in her life she felt really
nervous. It was in vain that she sought to reassure herself by recalling
past triumphs on the stage or by telling herself how easily she had
dealt with Lady Chatfield. Failure in either of those cases would not
have been irremediable; but let her make no mistake, before to-day's
dusk she should have settled the whole of her future life. If she made a
fool of herself she should never escape from being pointed out as a
Vanity girl; if she succeeded, the Vanity girl would be forgotten, and
by sheer personal prowess she might lead the county. It was a tribute to
Dorothy's complexion that not even on this rather shaky morning did she
feel the need for rouge. Five Tree Farm was only three miles from Clare
Court, and the meets there, being considered the best of the season,
always had very large fields. She was disappointed that Tony was not in
pink, but he told her he did not care enough about hunting to dress up
for it.
"That's what I like about shooting," he said, "there isn't all this
confounded putting it on."
The master cantered up and congratulated Dorothy on her first appearance
with the Horley Hunt.
"We're going to draw Dedenham Copse first," he informed her, and
cantered off again, shouting loudly to two unfortunate young men with
bicycles who were doing no harm at all, but whom he persisted in abusing
as "damned socialists." Suddenly, hounds gave tongue with changed,
almost intolerable eager note; there was a thud of hoofs all round her;
confused cries; the sound of a horn shrilling to the gray sky....
"Wonderful morning for scent," she heard somebody say, and flushed
because she thought a personal remark had been passed about herself; but
before she had time to worry who had said it and why it had been said
Mignonette was nearly leading the field.
"Dorothy," shouted her husband, "for God's sake don't get too far in
front. Hold your mare in a bit. And for God's sake don't ride over
hounds."
But Dorothy paid no attention to him and was soon galloping with the
first half-dozen. By her side appeared Charlie Fanhope.
"Topping run," he breathed. "I say, you're looking glorious. Awful to
think I shall be on the way to Eton this time to-morrow."
She smiled at him; from out of the past came the memory of an old
colored Christmas supplement on the walls of the nursery in Lonsdale
Road. A girl and a boy on rocking-horses, brown and dapple-gray, the boy
wearing a green-velvet cap and jacket, the girl befrilled and besashed,
were both plunging forward with rosy smiles. Underneath it had been
inscribed: "Yoicks! Tally-ho!" While her mare's heels thudded over the
soft turf, Dorothy kept saying to herself, "Yoicks! Yoicks! Yoicks!"
Charlie Fanhope, riding beside her, was as fresh and rosy as the boy in
the picture.
"You can't take that gate, can you?" he was saying.
Before her like a ladder rose a five-barred gate. At the riding-school
in Knightsbridge Dorothy had jumped obstacles quite as high; but those
had been obstacles that collapsed conveniently when touched by the heels
of her horse.
"I say I don't think you can take that gate," Charlie Fanhope repeated,
anxiously. "I'll open it. I'll open it."
But Dorothy in a dream left all to Mignonette; remembering from real
life to grip the pommel, to keep her wrists down, and to sit well back,
she seemed to be uttering a prolonged gasp that was carried away by the
wind as a diver's gasp is lost in the sound of the water. Where was her
cousin? Left behind to crackle through one of those gaps he knew of.
Yoicks! Yoicks! Yoicks! They were in a wide, down-sloping meadowland
intensely green, and checkered with the black and red riders in groups;
hounds were disappearing at the bottom of the slope in a thick coppice.
Nursery pictures of Caldecott came back to Dorothy when she saw the
squire with his horn and his mulberry-colored face and his huge bay
horse go puffing past to investigate the check, which lasted long enough
for Dorothy to receive many felicitations upon her horsewomanship.
"My word! Doodles," said her husband, cantering up to her side. "You
really are a wonder, but for the Lord's sake be careful."
"I told you that you didn't yet really know me," she murmured; before he
could reply, from the farthest corner of the coppice came the whip's
"Viewhalloo." Hounds gave tongue again with high-pitched notes of
excitement as of children playing. Forrard away! For-rard! They were off
again with the fox gone away toward Maidens' Common, and before the
merry huntsmen the prospect of the finest run in Devonshire. Thirty
minutes at racing speed and never a check; wind singing; hoofs thudding;
a view of the fox; Dorothy always among the first half-dozen riders.
They killed some twelve miles away from Clare in Tangley Bottom, and
nobody would have accused the master, when he handed Dorothy the brush,
of being influenced by the countess's charming company at dinner on
Saturday night. Best of all in a day of superlatives, Clarehaven had
taken a nasty toss; his wife had him in hand as securely as she had
Mignonette.
"Glorious day," Connie sighed when at last they were walking through the
gates of the park.
"Glorious," echoed Dorothy.
A faint flush low on the western sky symbolized her triumph. And though
one or two malicious women said that it was a pity Lord Clarehaven
should have married a circus girl, the legend never spread. Besides,
they had not been introduced to the Diana of Clare, who soon had the
county as securely in hand as her horse and her husband.
Dorothy, tired though she was, felt the need of confiding in somebody
the tale of her triumph. She was even tempted to write to Olive. In the
end she chose her mother; perhaps the kindness of the dowager had
stirred a dormant piety.
She wrote:
MY DEAR MOTHER,--I am sorry I could not come and see you before I
got married, but you can understand how delicate and difficult my
position was, and how much everything depended on myself. No doubt,
later on when I am thoroughly at home in my new surroundings, it
will be easier for us to meet again. I don't know if father told
you that I did explain to him my motives in treating you all rather
abruptly. Or did he never refer to a little talk we once had? You
will be glad to hear that I am very, very happy. My husband adores
me, my mother-in-law has been more than kind, and my sisters-in-law
equally so. On Thursday we drove over to Chatfield Hall to see my
husband's grandmother, old Lady Chatfield, who is famous for
speaking her mind, and of course not at all prejudiced in my favor
by my having been on the stage. However, we had a jolly little talk
together and everybody is delighted with the impression I made. On
Saturday we had a small dinner-party. The rector, who is very High
Church and would not, therefore, appeal to father, was there. Mr.
Kingdon, the squire, would be more his style. There was also a Mr.
Greenish, who promised to teach me gardening. Quite a jolly
evening. Yesterday morning all the villagers cheered when I came
out of church, and to-day I hunted with the Horley. I was rather a
success. I hope you got the check for L500 I sent you, and that you
will buy yourself something nice with it. It isn't exactly a
present, but in a way it counts as one, doesn't it? You must try to
be a little more firm with father in future. Don't forget that
though I may seem heartless I am not really so. I hope you will
write to me sometimes. You should address the envelope to The
Countess of Clarehaven, but if you speak about me to your friends
you should speak about me as Lady Clarehaven.
Your loving daughter,
DOROTHY CLAREHAVEN.
IV
For two years Dorothy's life as a countess went quietly along, gathering
in its train a number of pleasant little memories that in after years
were to mean something more than pleasure. The major difficulties of her
new position were all encountered and defeated in that first week;
thenceforward nothing seriously disturbed her for long. In the autumn of
the year in which Clarehaven married, the dowager, after consulting
Dorothy, decided that his restlessness was finally cured and that the
danger of his wanting to tear about the Continent in Lee-Lonsdale cars
no longer threatened the family peace. In these circumstances the
dowager thought it would be tactful to move into Clare Lodge with
Arabella and Constantia.
She should not be too far away if her daughter-in-law had need of her,
and by moving that little way off she should do much to prevent her
son's chafing against the barriers of domesticity. It would be easier
for Dorothy to act as hostess of the shooting-parties that were arranged
for the autumn if she were apparent as the only hostess. In the
administration of the village the two countesses shared equally--the
dowager by superintending the making of soup and gruel for sick
villagers, Dorothy by assisting at its distribution. The rector won
Dorothy's heart by his readiness to discuss with her the history of the
great family into which she had married, and by preparing a second
edition of his _Clarehaven and the Clares_ for when it should be wanted,
affixing against the fifth earl's name an asterisk, like a second star
of Bethlehem, that should direct the wise reader to this foot-note:
...The present Earl in January, 1906, delighted his many friends
and well-wishers in the county by wedding the beautiful Miss
Dorothy Lonsdale, a distant connection of that Lord Cleveden who is
famous as a most capable administrator in the land of the golden
wattle and upon "India's coral strand."
She for her part won Mr. Beadon's heart by often attending his services
at Clarehaven, and not merely by attending herself, but by insisting
upon Mrs. Bitterplum's and Mrs. Smith's attending, too. This arrangement
suited everybody, because the dowager at Little Cherrington was able to
worship her stained-glass window without a sense that, whatever she
might be before God's throne, she was now of secondary importance in the
church. The step up that the rector had promised himself for Easter was
effected without an apoplexy from Mr. Kingdon, possibly because the
white stole did not inflame his taurine eye. At Whitsuntide, however,
when a red stole appeared, his face followed the liturgical sequence,
and there was a painful scene in the churchyard on a hot morning in
early June. Dorothy, on being appealed to by the rector, drove over to
Cherrington Hall that afternoon and remonstrated with Mr. Kingdon on his
inconsiderate behavior. She pointed out that Mrs. Beadon was in an
interesting condition at the moment and that if Mr. Kingdon had his
prejudices to consider, Mr. Beadon had his conscience; that it was not
right for the squire to add fuel to the ancient rivalry between Great
and Little Cherrington; and finally that inasmuch as the bishop was
shortly coming to stay at Clare for a confirmation, it would be unkind
to pain his sensitive diocesan spirit with these parochial disputes.
Dorothy's arguments may not have convinced the squire, but her beauty
and condescension penetrated where logic was powerless, and Mr. Beadon
was allowed to preach for more than twenty bee-loud Sundays after
Trinity wearing a grass-green stole round his neck and with never a word
of protest from the squire. Nor were the Sundays within the octaves of
St. Peter or St. James, of St. Lawrence or St. Bartholomew, profaned by
the squire's objections to the tribute of red silk that Mr. Beadon paid
to the blood of the martyrs. His wife celebrated her husband's victory
by producing twins at Lammastide, and everybody in the neighborhood said
that the religious tone of Cherrington was remarkably high.
In September Dorothy had her first shooting-party, to which, among
others, Arthur Lonsdale and Harry Tufton were invited. Tony had been in
camp with his yeomanry regiment during most of August; he seemed glad to
be back at Clare; the shooting was good; the visits of his old friends
from London did not apparently disturb him. Notwithstanding Connie's
lessons, Dorothy never became a good shot; she really hated killing
birds. However, she encouraged Clarehaven to go on with his favorite
sport, and herself hunted hard all the season. She was much admired as a
horsewoman, and the fact that she had not so long ago been a Vanity girl
was already as dim as most old family curses are. In early spring Tony
suggested that it would be a good idea to go up to town for the season.
"A very good idea," she agreed. "Bella and Connie ought to be
presented." Dorothy spoke as calmly as if she had been presented
herself. "It's a pity I can't present them," she added, "but I should
not like to be presented myself. I don't think that actresses ought to
be presented, even if they do retire from the stage when they marry.
Sometimes an individual suffers unjustly; but it's better that one
person should suffer than that all sorts of precedents should be
started. Of course, your mother will present them."
"But look here, I thought we'd go up alone," Tony argued. "I told you
I'd had the house done up very comfortably. I don't think the girls
would enjoy London a bit."
"They may not enjoy it," said Dorothy, "but they ought to go."
May and June were spent in town in an unsuccessful attempt to induce
many eligible bachelors even to dance with Arabella and Constantia, let
alone to propose to them. Dorothy condoled with the dowager on Arthur
Lonsdale's bad taste in not wanting to marry Arabella; Arthur himself
was lectured severely on his obligations, and she could not understand
why he would not stop laughing, particularly as Lady Cleveden herself
had been in favor of the match. Dorothy went to the opera twice a week;
but she refused to go near the Vanity. Once she drove over to West
Kensington to see her mother, whose chin had more hairs than ever, but
who otherwise was not much changed. The rest of the family alarmed her
with the flight of time. Gladys and Marjorie were the Agnes and Edna of
four years ago; Agnes and Edna themselves were getting perilously like
the Norah and Dorothy of four years ago; Cecil was a medical student
smoking bigger pipes than Roland, who himself had grown a very heavy
black mustache. The countess managed to avoid seeing her father, and
when her mother protested his disappointment she said that he would
understand. Mrs. Caffyn was too much awed by having a countess for a
daughter to insist, and she assured her that not only did she fully
appreciate her reasons for withdrawing from open intercourse with her
family, but that she approved of them. The countess gave her a sealskin
coat for next winter, kissed her on both cheeks, and disappeared as
abruptly from West Kensington as Enoch from the antediluvian landscape.
The responsibility of two plain sisters became too much for Clarehaven;
after Ascot he admitted that he should be thoroughly glad to get back
to Clare, which was exactly what his wife had hoped.
While Dorothy was studying with the rector the lives of obscure saints
and the histories of prominent noblemen, she took lessons with the
doctor in natural history and with Mr. Greenish in horticulture. Mr.
Greenish enjoyed sending off on her account large orders to nursery
gardeners all over England for rare shrubs that he had neither the money
nor the space to buy for himself. Both at the Temple Show and at Holland
House he had been continually at Lady Clarehaven's elbow with a
note-book; and the glories of next summer in the Clare gardens made
bright his wintry meditations. Mr. Greenish himself looked rather like a
tuber, and it became a current joke that one day Dorothy would plant him
in a secluded border. The dowager was delighted by her daughter-in-law's
hobby, for which, though it ran to the extravagance of ordering the
whole stock of a new orange tulip at a guinea a bulb, not to mention
twenty roots of sunset-hued _Eremurus warer_ at forty shillings apiece,
and a hundred of topaz-hung _Eremurus bungei_ at ten shillings, she had
nothing but enthusiasm.
"My golden border will be lovely," Dorothy announced.
"It will be unique," Mr. Greenish added. "Lady Clarehaven is
specializing in shades of gold, copper, and bronze," he explained to the
dowager.
"These roots oddly resemble echinoderms," said Doctor Lane, looking at
the roots of the _Eremurus_.
"I should have said starfish," Mr. Greenish put in.
"Starfish _are_ echinoderms," said the doctor, severely.
"Wonderful!" the dowager exclaimed, with the eyes of a child looking
upon the fairies. She herself never rose to the height of her
daughter-in-law's Incalike ambitions; but her own Japanese tastes
(expensive enough) were gratified. Those black-stemmed hydrangeas were
ordered by the hundred to bloom by the edge of the pines, and Dorothy
presented her with twenty-four of M. Latour-Marlias's newest and most
expensive hybrid water-lilies. Nor did the hydrangeas come pink; they
knew that they were being employed by a noble family and preserved the
authentic blue of their patrons' blood. As the rector hoped before he
died that popular clamor in the Cherringtons would compel him to flout
his bishop by holding an open-air procession upon the feast of Corpus
Christi, so Dorothy aspired to convert the two villages from vegetables
to flowers. She knew, however, that it would be useless to attempt too
much at first in this direction, and at Mr. Greenish's suggestion she
decided to open her campaign by organizing a grand entertainment for the
two Cherringtons, Clarehaven, and the several villages and hamlets in
the neighborhood. Uncle Chat was called in to help with his advice, and
while Tony was in camp she made her preparations. Marquees were hired
from Exeter; the countryside pulsated with the spirit of competition.
Dorothy drew up the bills herself with a nice compromise between the
claims of age and strict precedence in her list of patrons.
CLAREHAVEN AND CHERRINGTON
AGRICULTURAL FETE AND
FLOWER SHOW
Saturday, August 31, 1907
UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF
The Earl of Chatfield; the Earl and Countess of Clarehaven; Lavinia,
Countess of Chatfield; Augusta, Countess of Clarehaven; the Viscount
Paignton; the Lady Jane Fanhope; the Lady Arabella Clare; the Lady
Constantia Clare; the Lady Mary Fanhope; the Lady Maud Fanhope; George
Kingdon, Esq., J.P., M.F.H., and Mrs. Kingdon; the Rev. Claude Conybeare
Beadon, M.A., and Mrs. Beadon; Dr. Eustace Lane; Horatio Greenish, Esq.
Prizes for live stock, including poultry, pigeons, and rabbits.
Prizes for collections of mixed vegetables.
A special prize offered by the Earl of Chatfield for the best collection
of runner-beans.
A special and very _valuable_ prize offered by the Countess of
Clarehaven for the best collection of _flowers_ from a cottage garden.
A special prize offered by the Dowager Countess of Clarehaven for the
best collection of wild flowers made by a village child within a
four-mile radius of Clare Court.
A special prize offered by Doctor Lane for a collection of insect pests
set and mounted by the scholars of Cherrington Church Schools and Horley
Board Schools.
The Countess of Clarehaven has kindly consented to give away the prizes.
The band of the Loyal North Devon Dragoons (by kind permission of
Colonel Budding-Robinson, M.V.O., and officers) will play during the
afternoon.
Swings, roundabouts, cocoanut-shies, climbing greasy pole for a side of
bacon offered by H. Greenish, Esq., sack-races, egg-and-spoon races,
hat-trimming competition for agricultural laborers.
ILLUMINATIONS AND FIREWORKS
Entrance, one shilling. After five o'clock, sixpence. After eight,
threepence. Children free.
REFRESHMENTS
It was a blazing day, one of those typical days when rustic England
seems to consist entirely of large cactus dahlias and women perspiring
in bombazine. Tony, to Dorothy's annoyance, had declined to open the
proceedings with a speech, and with Uncle Chat also refusing, Mr.
Kingdon had to be asked to address the competitors. He bellowed a number
of platitudes about the true foundations of England's greatness, told
everybody that he was a Conservative--a Tory of the old school. He might
say amid all this floral wealth a Conservatory. Ha-ha! He had no use for
new-fangled notions, and, by Jove! when he looked round at the
magnificent display that owed so much to the energy and initiative of
Lady Clarehaven, by Jove! he couldn't understand why anybody wanted to
be anything else except a Conservative.
"No politics, squire," the village atheist cried from the back of the
tent, and Mr. Kingdon, who had been badly heckled by that gentleman at a
recent election meeting, descended from the rostrum.
When the time came to distribute the awards Dorothy sprang the little
surprise of which only Mr. Greenish was in the secret, by making a
speech herself. She spoke with complete self-assurance and, as the
_North Devon Courant_ said, "with a gracious comprehension of what life
meant to her humbler neighbors."
"Fellow-villagers of the two Cherringtons and of Clarehaven," she began,
evoking loud applause from Mr. and Mrs. Bitterplum and Mr. and Mrs.
Smith, who between them had raised the largest marrow, for which they
would shortly receive ten shillings as a token of England's gratitude,
"in these days when so much is heard of rural depopulation I confess
that looking round me at this crowded assembly I am not one of the
alarmists. I confess that I see no signs of rural depopulation among the
merry faces of the little children of our healthy North Devon breed. I
regret that the committee did not include in its list of prizes another
for the best collection of home-grown children." (Loud cheers from the
audience, in the middle of which one of the little Smiths of Clarehaven
had to be led out of the tent because there was some doubt whether in
chewing one of the prize dahlias he had not swallowed an earwig.)
"Meanwhile, I can only marvel at the enthusiasm and good will with which
you have all worked to make our first agricultural fete the success it
undoubtedly has been. I am told by people who understand these things
that no finer runner-beans have ever appeared than the collection of
runner-beans for which, after long deliberation by the judges, Mr. Isaac
Hodge of Little Cherrington has been awarded the prize." (Cheers.) "I
will not detain you with eulogies of the potatoes shown by our worthy
neighbor, Mr. Blundell of Great Cherrington. Nor shall I detain you by
singing the praises of the really noble beet-roots from the garden of
Mr. Adam Crump of Horley Hill. But I should like to say here how much I
regret that the collections of flowers fell so far below the standard
set by the vegetables. We must remember that without beauty utility is
of little use. This autumn I shall be happy to present flower seeds to
all cottage gardens who apply for them. Mr. Greenish has kindly
consented to act as my distributer. Next year I shall present five
pounds and a silver cup for the best exhibit from these seeds. And now
nothing remains for me except to congratulate once more the winners on
their well-deserved success, and the losers on a failure that only the
exceptional quality of the winning exhibits prevented being a success,
too."
Amid loud cheers Dorothy pinned rosettes to the lapels of the perspiring
competitors, shook hands with each one, to whom she handed his prize
wrapped in tissue-paper, and, bowing graciously, descended from the
dais.
"Now if I can make a speech like that at a flower-show," she said to her
husband that evening, "why can't you speak in the House of Lords?"
The fact of the matter was that Dorothy was beginning to worry herself
over Clarehaven's lack of interest in the affairs of his country. Since
they had been married the only additional entry in Debrett under his
title was the record of his being a J.P. for the county of Devon.
Dorothy felt that this was not enough; he should be preparing himself by
his demeanor in the House of Lords to be offered at least an
under-secretaryship when the Radicals should be driven from power.
"All right," said Tony. "But I can't very well play the hereditary
legislator and all that if you insist upon keeping me down in the
country."
"When does Parliament reassemble?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know. Some time in the autumn, I suppose."
"Very well, then, we'll go up to town on one condition, which is that
you will make a speech. If you haven't spoken within a week of the
opening I shall come back here."
Tony, in order to get away from Devonshire, was ready to promise
anything, but at the end of October, on a day also memorable in the
history of Clare for the largest battue ever held in those coverts,
Dorothy told her husband that she was going to have a baby.
He flushed with the slaughter of hundreds of birds, she flushed with
what all this meant to her and him and England, faced each other in the
bridal chamber of Clare that itself was flushed with a crimson October
sunset.
"Tony, aren't you wildly happy?"
"Why, yes ... of course I am ... only, Doodles, I suppose this means you
won't go up to town? Oh well, never mind. Gad! you look glorious this
evening." He put his arms round her and kissed her.
"Not that way," she murmured. "Not that way now."
V
The pride and joy that Dorothy felt were so complete that she would take
no risk of spoiling them by allowing her husband to intrude upon her at
such a time. This boy of hers--there was no fear in her sanguine and
circumspect mind that she might produce a daughter--was the fruit of
herself and the earldom. To this end had she let Clarehaven make love to
her, and if now she should continue to allow him such liberty she should
be cheapening herself like a woman of pleasure. If at first she had
rejoiced in her own position as a countess, all that self-satisfaction
was now incorporated in this unborn son to be magnified by him into
nobility and all that was expressed by nobility in its fullest sense.
The thrill that every woman, however much she may dread or resent it,
feels at the first prospect of maternity was for Dorothy heightened
beyond any comparison that would not be blasphemous. On this small green
earth would walk a Viscount Clare that, having taken flesh from a Vanity
girl, should be the savior of his country. It no longer mattered that
her husband was blind to the duties of his rank when she held in her
womb, not some political pawn-broker like Disraeli, but an incarnation
of the benign genius of aristocracy, a being that would indeed ennoble
herself. Yet the father of this prodigy regarded him merely as an
unwelcome hindrance to his plan for spending the winter in London. If it
were not for the duty she owed to a great house to produce other
children, and so by every means in mortal power save the family from
extinction, she should never again live with Tony as his wife. What had
been all their kisses except the prelude to this event? Did he with his
boots and his guns suppose that as a man he counted with this unborn son
within her? Poor vain fool, not to have comprehended that every conjugal
duty, every social obligation, every movement of her head, every flash
of her eye, every offer of her hand since she came to Clare had been
consecrated to this great issue. Yet his flimsy imagination, which, were
it never so flimsy, might at such a moment have managed to spur his body
to kneel in awe of the future, had thought of nothing except to make
love as lightly as he had made incessant love to her ever since they
were married. Love! What did she care for that kind of love? Only for
this result, only because she had believed that perfect fruit comes from
perfect blossom, had she yielded to him all of herself with passion,
sometimes with ecstasy. And now her reward was at hand. The wild
autumnal gales might sweep round the ancient house, but at last it was
secure; she, Dorothy Lonsdale, had secured it.
There was no hunting, of course, for Dorothy this season, not even in
so mild a form as cubbing, and, amorous of solitude, she often used to
walk by herself to Clarehaven; there, on one of those green headlands
that had withstood the sea when the fortifications of Clare had crumbled
in the foaming tide, she would sit by the hour, drinking in from the
salt blast strength and endurance for this son of hers dedicate from the
womb to his country and to his order. On those wild days the little
church, which belonged to the dim origins of the family and had been
built by sea-rovers to abide in their hearts while they were seafaring,
became a true shrine for her. She would take refuge there from the fury
of the storm, and there sit in an ancient chair bleached and worm-eaten,
her eyes fixed upon that east window stained by nothing save spindrift
and scud from the sea. The wind would howl and shriek, would rattle at
the hasps of the narrow windows like hands entreating shelter, would
drum and whistle and moan by the old oaken doors, while Dorothy sat in a
stillness of gray light, herself radiant with that first beauty of
coming motherhood before the weary months of waiting have begun to drag
the cheeks. There for hours she would sit, her eyes shining, her neck
blue-veined with blood coursing to reinforce the second life that was in
the making, her complexion not paragoned by the petal of any rose in all
the roses that ever had or ever would bloom at Clare.
Everything in the little church had taken on a luminous gray from the
open space of light by which it was surrounded. The altar was of
granite; the candlesticks of pewter; the crucifix of silver. Wise with
all his follies, the rector had chosen this church to express whatever,
still untainted by expediency or snobbery, was left of his inmost
aspirations, and here he had allowed nothing to affront the stark
simplicity of such architecture. Here there were no chrysanthemums in
brazen vases, only sprigs of sea-holly gathered by children on the salt
edge of the downs, sea-holly from the fled summer that preserved the
illusion of having been gathered yesterday. The benches had not been
varnished; year by year they had slowly assumed that desiccated
appearance of age which gives to wood thus mellowed a strangely
immaterial look, a lightness and a grace, rough-hewn though it be, that
varnished wood never acquires. In this building, wrought, it seemed, by
labor of wind and cloud, of air and rain, Dorothy's coloring exceeded
richness; when the yellow winter sun shone through the landward windows
the effulgence mingled with the hue of her cheeks to incarnadine the
very air around her and blush upon the stones beyond. How often had she
sat thus in meditation upon nothing except the power and strength of her
unborn son! Could her husband wait beside her in this church where his
pirate ancestors, dripping with sea-water, had thanked God for their
deliverance and for booty stacked upon the beach below? Not he! He would
be trying to play with her wrist all the time, pecking at her with
kisses like a canary at a lump of sugar.
Dorothy had no desire to make a secret of her condition; she was only
too anxious that everybody who could appreciate its importance should be
made aware of it. Yet there was nothing in her of the gross femininity
that takes a pleasure in accentuating the outward signs of approaching
motherhood and, as if it had done something unusual, rejoices in a
physical condition that is attainable by all women. Dorothy's pride lay
in giving an heir to a great family, not in adding another piece of
carnality to the human race. Compared with most women, the grace and
beauty with which she expressed her state was that of a budding daffodil
beside a farrowing sow. So little indeed did Tony realize her condition
that in January, on the anniversary of their wedding, he half jestingly
rallied her on simulating it to keep him down in Clare. He added other
reasons, which offended her so deeply that for the rest of these months
she demanded a room to herself. Dorothy knew that by loosening the
physical hold she had over him she was taking a risk, but she staked
everything in the future upon the birth of this son, and she declined to
imperil his perfection upon earth by unpleasant thoughts in these
crucial months of his making. Perhaps, if she had been patient and taken
a little trouble to explain her point of view more fully to Tony, he
might have understood, but she was so intent upon aiding this other life
within her that she could not spare a moment to educate her husband.
The super-dowager of Chatfield had kissed her grandson's wife on
Christmas Eve, and when at Candlemas the old lady died Dorothy was sad
to think she had not lived to kiss her son. The manner of her death was
characteristic. February had come in with a spell of balmy weather, and
Lady Chatfield, according to her habit on fine days, insisted upon going
out to sun herself in front of the house. In this occupation she was
often annoyed by hens invading the drive; to guard herself against their
aggression she used always to be armed with several bundles of fagots,
which she kept at her side to fling at the aggressive birds. Her son had
often begged that she would allow the hens to be kept far enough away
from the house to secure her against their trespassing; but the old lady
really enjoyed the sport and passed many contented hours shooting at
them like this with fagots. Unfortunately, that Candlemas morning,
either she had come out insufficiently provided with ammunition or the
birds were particularly venturesome. When the luncheon-bell rang there
was not a fagot left, and a quantity of hens were clucking with impunity
round her still form. At such a crisis her self-propelling chair must
have refused to work for the first time; with ammunition exhausted,
transport destroyed, communications cut, and the enemy advancing from
every point, the old lady had died of exasperation. The dowager, grieved
by what in her heart she felt was an unseemly way of dying and faintly
puzzled how to picture her mother in the heavenly courts, spent a good
deal of time in Little Cherrington church, praying that she would be
humble in Paradise. The dowager's childlike and apprehensive fancy
played round an apocalyptic vision of her mother criticizing the sit of
a halo, or poking with a palm-branch just men in the eye. She confided
some of these fears to Mr. Beadon, who tried to impress upon her his own
conceptions of Eternal Life, gently and respectfully rebuking her for
the materialism of which she was guilty. Dorothy found something most
admirable in the super-dowager's death; she wished her own unborn son
might inherit his great-grandmother's pertinacity and defiance for the
time when, like intrusive poultry, democracy should invade the
privileges of his order.
The dowager's loss of her mother was followed in March by a blow that
upset her more profoundly. During a fierce gale a large elm-tree in
Little Cherrington churchyard was blown down and in its fall broke the
Burne-Jones window that commemorated the fourth earl. It was no great
loss to art, but the effect upon the dowager was tremendous. The shock
of seeing the irreverent winds of March blowing through that colored
screen she had set up between herself and the reality of her husband
destroyed the figment of him that her pampered imagination had
elaborated, and she remembered him as he was--an ill-tempered gambler, a
drunken spendthrift, always with that fixed leer of ataxy for a pretty
woman ... she remembered how once she had overheard somebody say that
Clarehaven was now a rake without a handle. Her conscience was pricked;
she must warn Dorothy of what the Clare inheritance might include.
"Dorothy dear," she implored. "I don't like to seem interfering, but I
do beg you not to leave Tony alone too much. I fear for him. I--" with
whispers and head-shakes she poured out the true story of her married
life.
But Dorothy, with her whole being concentrated upon that unborn son, had
no vigilance to waste on Tony. If he should go to the bad, let him go.
The sins of the fourth earl and the follies of the fifth should all be
forgotten in that paragon the sixth. At the same time, the dowager's
story left its mark on Dorothy; thenceforward, when she paced the long
picture-gallery of Clare, she would often ask herself in affright what
passions and vices, what weakness, shame, and folly, had been cloaked by
those painted forms of ancestors. She would give him her flesh; but he
must inherit from them also; from those unblinking eyes he must derive
some of the gleams in his own. But it should be from his mother that he
derived most ... then she caught her breath. If that were so he would
have in him something of Gilbert Caffyn, of that hypocrite her father.
When the dowager's window was broken air was let in upon Dorothy's
painted screen as well. She was honest with herself on those mornings
when she paced the long gallery; she made no more pretense of romantic
origins; the Lonsdale bugle-horn was cracked and useless. By what she
was should her son live, not by what she liked to think she might be.
Some of the strength that she had summoned for him during those autumnal
hours in the little church by the sea she begged now for herself; while
she defied those frigid glances that ever watched her progress up and
down, up and down that long gallery, she stripped herself of all sham
glories and for the sake of him within her dedicated herself to truth.
Lady Godiva, riding naked through the streets of Coventry, was not more
heroic than Dorothy riding naked through her own mind for the sake of
that Lucius-Clare-to-be called by courtesy Viscount Clare.
Dorothy had chosen Lucius for his name after that other viscount who was
Secretary of State to Charles I, that Lucius Cary who was killed at
Newbury and whose story she had happened upon while reading tales of the
great dead. If Lucius, Viscount Clare, could be like Lucius, Viscount
Falkland, what would West Kensington matter? What would the Vanity mean,
or that flat round the corner? What would signify the plebeian soul of
her father?
The only person at present to whom Dorothy confided the name she had
chosen was Arabella. The two girls had been very sympathetic during
those winter months, and had entirely devoted themselves to their
sister-in-law. At first, when she had withdrawn herself every day to go
and meditate in Clarehaven church, they had been shy of intruding upon
her; but their interest in family affairs, from those of guinea-pigs to
those of cottagers, had become so much a part of their ordinary life
that they could not resist trying to obtain Dorothy's permission for
them to be interested in hers. Connie, whose main object was to watch
over Dorothy's physical well-being, was ready to give it as much
devotion as she would have given to a favorite mare in foal or to a
litter of blind retriever pups; Arabella, who had inherited some of the
dowager's ability to dream, was content to sit for as long as Dorothy
wanted her company and talk of nothing except the future greatness of
her nephew. Connie brought pillows for Dorothy's back; Arabella brought
her books, in one of which Dorothy read about that very noble gentleman,
Lucius Cary.
In February Clarehaven went up to town, partly because shooting was
over, partly because he did not want to attend his grandmother's
funeral. His behavior was commented upon harshly by Fanhopes and Clares
alike; barely two years after her marriage Dorothy found that she, who
was supposed to have been going to bring the families to ruin and
disgrace, was now regarded as their salvation. Whatever she said was
listened to with respect, whatever she did was regarded with approval.
Before her pregnancy, Dorothy's conceit would have been gratified by
such deference; now it only possessed a value for her son's sake. She
longed more than ever for general esteem; but she coveted it for him,
that he might grow up with pride and confidence in his mother.
When primroses lightened the woods of Clare like an exquisite dawn
between the dusk of violets and the deep noon of bluebells, Connie
exercised her authority over her half of Dorothy, forbade so much
reading indoors, and prescribed walks. Dorothy now haunted the recesses
of the woodland; when Tony, who had received a number of reproachful
letters for staying in town at such a time, came back, she was gentler
with him than any of the others were.
Those days spent in watching the deer, already snow-flecked to match the
dappled sunlight of the woods, had been so enriched by contemplation of
the active grace and beauty of these wild things that Dorothy discovered
in herself a new affection for Tony, an affection born of gratitude to
him, because it was he who had given her all this. He came back on a
murmurous afternoon of mid-May. Dorothy was sitting upon the summit of a
knoll where a few tall beeches scarcely troubled the sunlight with their
high fans of lucent green. Beneath her ran a meadow threaded with the
gold of cowslips, and while she stared into cuckoo-haunted distances she
heard above the buzzing of the bees the sound of his car. Starting up,
she waved to him, so that he stopped the car and ran up the slope to
greet her.
"Why, Doodles, what's the matter?" he exclaimed. "You've been crying."
He was embarrassed by her hot wet cheeks when she pressed them to his.
"No, they're happy tears," she said. "I was thinking of him and that one
day all this will be his." She caught the landscape in a gesture. "All
the autumn, Tony, I prayed for him to be great and strong, and all the
winter that he might be great and good. Now I think I should be happy if
he did nothing more remarkable than love this land--his land. Tony,
don't you feel how wonderful it is that you and I should give somebody
all this?"
Formerly, when Dorothy had talked about their son, the father had not
been able to grasp that there would ever be such a person. Now in this
month before the birth he experienced a sudden awe in regarding his
wife. That embrace she had given him for welcome, her figure, the look
in her eyes--they were strange to him; she was strange to him--a new
mysterious creature that awed him as an abstraction of womanhood, not as
a lovely girl that granted or refused him kisses.
"I say, Doodles, I feel an awful brute for going away like that."
She laughed lightly.
"You needn't. I was happier alone. Don't look so disconsolate. I'm glad
you've come now."
"I didn't stay up for the Derby," he pleaded, in extenuation of his
neglect.
She laughed again.
"Tony, you haven't yet heard his name. I've chosen Lucius."
"That's a rum name. Why Latin all of a sudden? Or if Latin, why not
Marcus Antoninus, don't you know?"
"It's a name I like very much."
He looked at her suspiciously.
"Who did you know called Lucius?"
"Nobody. It's a name I like. That's all."
"You promise me you never knew anybody called Lucius?" He had caught her
hand.
"Never."
"All right. You can have it."
But the nimbus round her motherhood was for the husband melted by the
breath of jealousy. Let children come to interrupt their love, she would
be his again soon; and what trumpery she made of those women with whom
he had played in London as a lonely child plays with dolls.
Dorothy's confinement was expected about the middle of June. When the
nurse arrived, for the first time in all these months she began to have
fears. She never doubted that the baby would be a boy; but she had dark
fancies of monstrosity and madness, and the nurse had all she could do
to reassure her. The weather during the first week of the month was damp
and gusty; after that gilded May-time it seemed worse than it really
was. The rustling of the vexed foliage held a menace that the sharp
whistle of the winter gales had lacked. However, by the middle of the
month the weather had changed for the better, and the last day was
perfect.
When Dorothy's travail began in the afternoon, the nurse asked for the
mowing of the lawns to be stopped, because she thought the noise would
irritate her patient. Dorothy, however, told her that she liked the
noise; in the comparatively long intervals between the first pains the
mower consoled her with its pretense of mowing away the minutes and thus
of audibly bringing the time of her achievement nearer.
The car was sent off to Exeter for another doctor, notwithstanding
Dorothy's wish that nobody except Doctor Lane should attend her. The old
gentleman had much endeared himself by his lessons in natural history,
and that he should crown his teaching by a practical demonstration of
his knowledge struck her as singularly appropriate. Doctor Lane himself
expressed great anxiety for assistance, because it looked as if the
confinement was going to be long and difficult. So hard was her labor,
indeed, that when the Exeter doctor arrived it was decided to give her
chloroform.
"Nothing's the matter, is it?" she murmured, perceiving that
preparations were going on round her. "Why doesn't he come? Nurse," she
called, "if babies take a long time, it means usually that the head is
very large, doesn't it?"
"Very often, my lady, yes. Oh yes, it does mean that very often. Try and
lie a little bit easier, dear. That's right."
"I think I'm rather glad," said Dorothy, painfully. "Lord Salisbury had
an enormous head."
"Fever?" whispered Doctor Lane, in apprehensively questioning tones.
"Tut, tut!"
Dorothy tried to smile at the silly old thing; but the pain was too much
for smiles.
There was another long consultation, and presently she heard Lord
Clarehaven being sent for.
"What's the matter?" she asked, sharply. "I'm not going to die, am I? I
won't. I won't. He mustn't be brought up by anybody else."
The nurse patted her hand. Outside some argument was going on, rising
and falling like the lawn-mower.
"A pity it's so dark," Dorothy murmured. "The mower had stopped, and I
liked the humming. All that talking in the corridor isn't so restful.
What's the time?"
"About half past ten, my lady."
A mighty pain racked her, a rending pain that seemed to leave her with
reluctance as if it had failed to hurt her enough. Her whole body
shivered when the pain passed on, and she had a feeling that it was a
personality, so complete was it, a personality that was only waiting in
a corner of the room and gathering new strength to rend her again.
Delirium touched her with hot fingers. It seemed that her body was like
the small triangle of uncut corn round which the reaper relentlessly
hums. It was coming again; it would tear the fibers of her again; it was
coming; the humming was nearer every moment. In an effort to check the
incommunicable experiences of fever, she asked if it was not the
lawn-mower that was humming.
"No, dear, it's the doctors talking to his lordship."
"What about?"
The humming ceased, for they gave her chloroform. When she came to
herself she lay for a second or two with closed eyes; then slowly,
luxuriously nearly, she opened them wide to look at her son. There was
nobody.
"Where is he?" she gasped, sitting up, dizzy and sick with the drug,
but with all her nerves strung to unnatural, uncanny perceptiveness.
The dowager was leaning over the bed and begging her to lie down.
"What's burning my face?" cried Dorothy.
"It must be my tears," her mother-in-law sobbed.
"Why are you crying? My boy, where is he? Where is he? Oh, tell me, tell
me, please tell me!"
The dowager and the nurse were looking at each other pitifully.
"Dorothy, my poor child, he was born dead."
The mother shrieked, for a pain that cut her ten thousand times more
sharply than all the pains of her travail united in a single spasm.
"It was a question, dear, of saving your life or losing the baby's."
"You're lying to me," Dorothy shrieked. "It was a monster! I know that.
It was a monster, and it had to be strangled. Oh, Doctor Lane, Doctor
Lane, why did you let them bring another doctor? You promised me you
wouldn't."
"No, no," said the dowager. "It was a perfect little boy with such
lovely little hands and toes. Everything perfect; but his head was too
large, dear. It was a question of you or him, and of course Tony
insisted that he should be sacrificed."
"Where is he? Tony!"
Her husband came in and knelt by the bed.
"Why did you do that? Why? Why didn't you let me die? He would have been
so much better than me. Can't you understand? Can't you understand?"
Everybody had stolen from the room to leave them together; but when he
leaned over to kiss her she struck him on the mouth.
"You only wanted me for one thing," she cried.
"Doodles, don't treat me like this. I can't express myself. I never
imagined that anything could be so horrible. I was asked to decide. You
don't suppose I could have lived with a cursed child who had killed
you!"
"How dare you curse him?"
"Dorothy, we'll have another. Don't be so miserable."
Suddenly she felt that nothing mattered.
"Will we?" she asked, indifferently.
"And we'll go up to town this autumn."
"Yes, there's nothing to keep us here," she said, "now."