THE WHEEL IN THE BRAIN
'Mine, mine--not yours,
It is not yours but mine,--give me the child'
It was half-an-hour before Larrie came back and found the tossed, empty
cot. He strode out of the house again, and up the hill in a fury of
passion.
Out of the train into which he had seen his friends, Wooster had stepped
and gone at quick speed, straight up the road leading to the house.
Larrie was not to know it was intended for the last visit of a lifetime.
He resisted the inclination to follow and slay him outright, and went
home instead--to find Dot had been there and taken away the child.
A second jealousy sprang up in his heart, jealousy of his own little
baby son. He could imagine the pass to which Dot had come, imagine the
heart hungerness that had prompted this. But it was all for the
child--none of the aching and longing had been for himself. The front
door of the house was open, he went straight through the hall and
upstairs two steps at a time to the sitting-room.
Dot was sitting rocking alone in the firelight; the little mother had
gone to a sudden case of illness in a cottage near, and Wooster had
taken her.
The child's little soft head lay against her breast, she held both its
bare little feet in her hand. There were tear-wet places on her cheeks,
and the eyes that looked down on the child were full of tenderness, but
her lips were rather tightly closed. She could not forget the verandah,
and Larrie's burst of laughter.
He strode across the room.
'Give me the child,' he said.
Her arms closed tightly round it.
'He is mine, mine,' she said.
'Give him to me,' he cried again.
She sprang to the door her eyes gleaming, her hands holding the little
soft body with desperate firmness. But he was before her, he looked down
at her with white face, and eyes blazing with scorn.
'You are not fit to hold him,' he said.
She was moving across to the second door clasping her burden
convulsively.
'I will die before you shall have him,' she said passionately.
'No you will not,' he said.
His words came slowly, there was a horrible note in his voice, 'There
is--your lover, you know.'
She turned and looked at him, incredulous horror in her wide eyes, her
arms loosened their hold a little, she went a step towards him. But the
light of madness in his eyes increased, he tore the child from her arms,
and carried it away with him out into the night.
* * * * *
He went slowly down the hill he had come up in such wild haste. He had
not felt the night wind before, but now it blew chillily on his burning
forehead and quietened the fever in his blood. He took off his coat and
wrapped it round the child, which lay warm and sleepy and quiet against
his shoulder all the way.
There had seemed to be a strange wheel working in his brain lately, it
had gone at a maddening rate during his short interview with Dot. But
something in the great hush of the grey-blue night stopped it for a time
and a sudden calmness and power of reasoning came to him once more.
When he reached the cottage he put the child down again in the cot and
covered it up warmly. Then he walked about staring at his misery. He
knew it had grown utterly past bearing. Everything in the place spoke of
Dot, spoke loudly and insistently, the silent piano, the dead flowers in
the vases, the foolish little red watering pot on the verandah nail, the
small garden boots in the hall corner with the red clay of the roads
dried on the heels. When he poured out his coffee at breakfast time he
shuddered because he saw beside him the little dear bright face that was
not there--when he helped himself to an egg he could not eat it, because
the stand held only two, instead of the by custom sacred three.
That was the warm old jacket on the second hall peg that she always
slipped on, to sit outside with him for his smoke, the big poppy trimmed
hat beside it, still kept the shape of her head in its crown. He could
not get away from it all. His eyes too refused to give up the picture of
her they had seen to-night, the tender innocent face, the pure eyes, the
trembling lips. Half-past ten brought the very end of his endurance, his
bitterness and his unbelief.
It had taken all these six days for his brain to grow clear and healthy
again; with the lifting of the strange cloud came the sudden horror of
the thing he had done, a shame at the shame he had heaped on her. He
found responsibilities that were his, he remembered the tenderness and
watchfulness and love which her eighteen years demanded, he saw with
lightning clearness that it had been sheer insanity that had distorted a
simple friendship and shamed them both.
He took up his hat to go out again. He would go and beseech her
forgiveness though he told himself of course, she could not possibly
give it. Still he would entreat her.
Then the strange wheel began again in his head, and as he walked a new
hot swinging sensation there, made him almost unconscious of what was
going on for minutes together. He took off his hat and went on blindly,
there were two shrinking figures in the shadow by the fence but he did
not heed them.
He knew quite well now what was going to happen to him, he was getting
that same brain fever again, he had had two years ago; it accounted for
everything.
He found a strange comfort in the knowledge. He was going to Dot--by the
time he got to the lights and voices of the house he knew his senses
would have gone and his illness come upon him, his danger would touch
her little tender heart and she would forgive. He even saw a vision of
his convalescence and white beautiful days beyond.
Then he came to the lights and people of the house, and before the
little mother could speak a word, the danger came upon him and the need
of forgiveness.