THE LAST SCENE
The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his pulse, in occult
calculation hideous to mark, said half-past eleven on the midnight.
Adrian, wearing a composedly amused expression on his dimpled plump
face,--held slightly sideways, aloof from paper and pen,--sat
writing at the library table. Round the baronet's chair, in a
semi-circle, were Lucy, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that
very ill bird at Raynham. They were silent as those who question the
flying minutes. Ripton had said that Richard was sure to come; but
the feminine eyes reading him ever and anon, had gathered matter for
disquietude, which increased as time sped. Sir Austin persisted in
his habitual air of speculative repose.
Remote as he appeared from vulgar anxiety, he was the first to speak
and betray his state.
"Pray, put up that watch. Impatience serves nothing," he said,
half-turning hastily to his brother behind him.
Hippias relinquished his pulse and mildly groaned: "It's no
nightmare, this!"
His remark was unheard, and the bearing of it remained obscure.
Adrian's pen made a louder flourish on his manuscript; whether in
commiseration or infernal glee, none might say.
"What are you writing?" the baronet inquired testily of Adrian,
after a pause; twitched, it may be, by a sort of jealousy of the
wise youth's coolness.
"Do I disturb you, sir?" rejoined Adrian. "I am engaged on a portion
of a Proposal for uniting the Empires and Kingdoms of Europe under
one Paternal Head, on the model of the ever-to-be-admired and
lamented Holy Roman. This treats of the management of Youths and
Maids, and of certain magisterial functions connected therewith. 'It
is decreed that these officers be all and every men of science,'
etc." And Adrian cheerily drove his pen afresh.
Mrs. Doria took Lucy's hand, mutely addressing encouragement to
her, and Lucy brought as much of a smile as she could command to
reply with.
"I fear we must give him up to-night," observed Lady Blandish.
"If he said he would come, he will come," Sir Austin interjected.
Between him and the lady there was something of a contest secretly
going on. He was conscious that nothing save perfect success would
now hold this self-emancipating mind. She had seen him through.
"He declared to me he would be certain to come," said Ripton; but he
could look at none of them as he said it, for he was growing aware
that Richard might have deceived him, and was feeling like a black
conspirator against their happiness. He determined to tell the
baronet what he knew, if Richard did not come by twelve.
"What is the time?" he asked Hippias in a modest voice.
"Time for me to be in bed," growled Hippias, as if everybody present
had been treating him badly.
Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted above. She
quietly rose. Sir Austin kissed her on the forehead, saying: "You
had better not come down again, my child." She kept her eyes on him.
"Oblige me by retiring for the night," he added. Lucy shook their
hands, and went out, accompanied by Mrs. Doria.
"This agitation will be bad for the child," he said, speaking to
himself aloud.
Lady Blandish remarked: "I think she might just as well have
returned. She will not sleep."
"She will control herself for the child's sake."
"You ask too much of her."
"Of her, not," he emphasized.
It was twelve o'clock when Hippias shut his watch, and said with
vehemence: "I'm convinced my circulation gradually and steadily
decreases!"
"Going back to the pre-Harvey period?" murmured Adrian as he wrote.
Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would
introduce them to the interior of his machinery, the external view
of which was sufficiently harrowing; so they maintained a discreet
reserve. Taking it for acquiescence in his deplorable condition,
Hippias resumed despairingly: "It's a fact. I've brought you to see
that. No one can be more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse.
My system is organically sound--I believe: I do every possible
thing, and yet I get worse. Nature never forgives! I'll go to bed."
The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.
Sir Austin took up his brother's thought: "I suppose nothing short
of a miracle helps us when we have offended her."
"Nothing short of a quack satisfies us," said Adrian, applying wax
to an envelope of official dimensions.
Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted
by Lucy's last look at him. He got up his courage presently and went
round to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose
and accompanied him out of the room, shrugging. When they had gone,
Lady Blandish said to the baronet: "He is not coming."
"To-morrow, then, if not to-night," he replied. "But I say he will
come to-night."
"You do really wish to see him united to his wife?"
The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.
"Can you ask me?"
"I mean," said the ungenerous woman, "your System will require no
further sacrifices from either of them?"
When he did answer, it was to say: "I think her altogether a
superior person. I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one
like her."
"Admit that your science does not accomplish everything."
"No: it was presumptuous--beyond a certain point," said the baronet,
meaning deep things.
Lady Blandish eyed him. "Ah me!" she sighed, "if we would always be
true to our own wisdom!"
"You are very singular to-night, Emmeline," Sir Austin stopped his
walk in front of her.
In truth, was she not unjust? Here was an offending son freely
forgiven. Here was a young woman of humble birth freely accepted
into his family and permitted to stand upon her qualities. Who would
have done more--or as much? This lady, for instance, had the case
been hers, would have fought it. All the people of position that he
was acquainted with would have fought it, and that without feeling
it so peculiarly. But while the baronet thought this, he did not
think of the exceptional education his son had received. He took the
common ground of fathers, forgetting his System when it was
absolutely on trial. False to his son it could not be said that he
had been: false to his System he was. Others saw it plainly, but he
had to learn his lesson by and by.
Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the
table, saying, "Well! well!" She fingered a half-opened parcel lying
there, and drew forth a little book she recognized. "Ha! what is
this?" she said.
"Benson returned it this morning," he informed her. "The stupid
fellow took it away with him--by mischance, I am bound to believe."
It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady Blandish turned
over the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.
She read: "A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind with
the mouthpiece of narrower?"
"I do not agree with that," she observed. He was in no humour for
argument.
"Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?"
He merely said: "Consider the sort of minds influenced by set
sayings. A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and
the majority rest there content: can the keeper of such a house be
flattered by his company?"
She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again. There
must be greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special
and admirable aptitude.
Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?--_He who sneers at
the failings of Humanity!_"
"Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!" cried the dark-eyed dame
as she beamed intellectual raptures.
Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: "There is no more
grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man
at the mercy of his feelings."
"He must have written it," she thought, "when he had himself for an
example--strange man that he is!"
Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly
insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she
reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man
that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the
loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands.
Nevertheless Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady's
allegiance was his for ever. The trial was at hand.
She said again: "He is not coming to-night," and the baronet, on
whose visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a
minute past, quietly added: "He is come."
Richard's voice was heard in the hall.
There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young
heir. Berry, seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy
now that her involuntary coldness had enhanced her value--"Such is
men!" as the soft woman reflected--Berry ascended to her and
delivered the news in pompous tones and wheedling gestures. "The
best word you've spoke for many a day," says she, and leaves him
unfee'd, in an attitude, to hurry and pour bliss into Lucy's ears.
"Lord be praised!" she entered the adjoining room exclaiming, "we're
goin' to be happy at last. They men have come to their senses. I
could cry to your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!"
"Hush!" Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her
knees. The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue
eyes started awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating,
knowing, but thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and
tried to still her frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting
even a whisper from bursting Mrs. Berry.
Richard had come. He was under his father's roof, in the old home
that had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood close to his wife
and child. He might embrace them both; and now the fulness of his
anguish and the madness of the thing he had done smote the young
man: now first he tasted hard earthly misery.
Had not God spoken to him in the tempest? Had not the finger of
heaven directed him homeward? And he had come: here he stood:
congratulations were thick in his ears: the cup of happiness was
held to him, and he was invited to drink of it. Which was the dream?
his work for the morrow, or this? But for a leaden load that he felt
like a bullet in his breast, he might have thought the morrow with
death sitting on it was the dream. Yes; he was awake. Now first the
cloud of phantasms cleared away: he beheld his real life, and the
colours of true human joy: and on the morrow perhaps he was to close
his eyes on them. That leaden bullet dispersed all unrealities.
They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady Blandish, Mrs.
Doria, Adrian, Ripton; people who had known him long. They shook his
hand: they gave him greetings he had never before understood the
worth of or the meaning. Now that he did they mocked him. There was
Mrs. Berry in the background bobbing, there was Martin Berry bowing,
there was Tom Bakewell grinning. Somehow he loved the sight of these
better.
"Ah, my old Penelope!" he said, breaking through the circle of his
relatives to go to her. "Tom! how are you?"
"Bless ye, my Mr. Richard," whimpered Mrs. Berry, and whispered
rosily, "all's agreeable now. She's waiting up in bed for ye, like a
new-born."
The person who betrayed most agitation was Mrs. Doria. She held
close to him, and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as
one accustomed to masks. "You are pale, Richard?" He pleaded
exhaustion. "What detained you, dear?" "Business," he said. She drew
him imperiously apart from the others. "Richard! is it over?" He
asked what she meant. "The dreadful duel, Richard." He looked
darkly. "Is it over? is it done, Richard?" Getting no immediate
answer, she continued--and such was her agitation that the words
were shaken by pieces from her mouth: "Don't pretend not to
understand me, Richard! Is it over? Are you going to die the death
of my child--Clare's death? Is not one in a family enough? Think of
your dear young wife--we love her so!--your child!--your father!
Will you kill us all?"
Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton's
communication to Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces
of a stricken soul.
Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:
"It's arranged--the matter you allude to."
"Indeed! truly, dear?"
"Yes."
"Tell me"--but he broke away from her, saying: "You shall hear the
particulars to-morrow," and she, not alive to double meaning just
then, allowed him to leave her.
He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he
would take only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in
the library. He said, without any show of feeling, that he must eat
before he saw the younger hope of Raynham: so there he sat, breaking
bread, and eating great mouthfuls, and washing them down with wine,
talking of what they would. His father's studious mind felt itself
years behind him, he was so completely altered. He had the precision
of speech, the bearing of a man of thirty. Indeed he had all that
the necessity for cloaking an infinite misery gives. But let things
be as they might he was _there_. For one night in his life Sir
Austin's perspective of the future was bounded by the night.
"Will you go to your wife now?" he had asked, and Richard had
replied with a strange indifference. The baronet thought it better
that their meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait
upstairs. The others perceived that father and son should now be
left alone. Adrian went up to him, and said: "I can no longer
witness this painful sight, so Good-night, Sir Famish! You may cheat
yourself into the belief that you've made a meal, but depend upon it
your progeny--and it threatens to be numerous--will cry aloud and
rue the day. Nature never forgives! A lost dinner can never be
replaced! Good-night, my dear boy. And here--oblige me by taking
this," he handed Richard the enormous envelope containing what he
had written that evening. "Credentials!" he exclaimed humorously,
slapping Richard on the shoulder. Ripton heard also the words
"propagator--species," but had no idea of their import. The wise
youth looked: You see we've made matters all right for you here, and
quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.
Richard shook his hand, and Ripton's. Then Lady Blandish said her
good-night, praising Lucy, and promising to pray for their mutual
happiness. The two men who knew what was hanging over him, spoke
together outside. Ripton was for getting a positive assurance that
the duel would not be fought, but Adrian said: "Time enough
to-morrow. He's safe enough while he's here. I'll stop it
to-morrow:" ending with banter of Ripton and allusions to his
adventures with Miss Random, which must, Adrian said, have led him
into many affairs of the sort. Certainly Richard was there, and
while he was there he must be safe. So thought Ripton, and went to
his bed. Mrs. Doria deliberated likewise, and likewise thought him
safe while he was there. For once in her life she thought it better
not to trust to her instinct, for fear of useless disturbance where
peace should be. So she said not a syllable of it to her brother.
She only looked more deeply into Richard's eyes, as she kissed him,
praising Lucy. "I have found a second daughter in her, dear. Oh! may
you both be happy!"
They all praised Lucy, now. His father commenced the moment they
were alone. "Poor Helen! Your wife has been a great comfort to her,
Richard. I think Helen must have sunk without her. So lovely a young
person, possessing mental faculty, and a conscience for her duties,
I have never before met."
He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy, and some
hours back he would have succeeded. Now it had the contrary effect.
"You compliment me on my choice, sir?"
Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible, and he could
speak no other way, his bitterness was so intense.
"I think you very fortunate," said his father.
Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of paternal
feeling was frozen. Richard did not approach him. He leaned against
the chimney-piece, glancing at the floor, and lifting his eyes only
when he spoke. Fortunate! very fortunate! As he revolved his later
history, and remembered how clearly he had seen that his father must
love Lucy if he but knew her, and remembered his efforts to persuade
her to come with him, a sting of miserable rage blackened his brain.
But could he blame that gentle soul? Whom could he blame? Himself?
Not utterly. His father? Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame
was there: it was everywhere and nowhere, and the young man cast it
on the Fates, and looked angrily at heaven, and grew reckless.
"Richard," said his father, coming close to him, "It is late
to-night. I do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation longer, or I
should have explained myself to you thoroughly, and I think--or at
least hope--you would have justified me. I had cause to believe that
you had not only violated my confidence, but grossly deceived me. It
was not so, I now know. I was mistaken. Much of our misunderstanding
has resulted from that mistake. But you were married--a boy: you
knew nothing of the world, little of yourself. To save you in
after-life--for there is a period when mature men and women who have
married young are more impelled to temptation than in youth,--though
not so exposed to it,--to save you, I say, I decreed that you should
experience self-denial and learn something of your fellows of both
sexes, before settling into a state that must have been otherwise
precarious, however excellent the woman who is your mate. My System
with you would have been otherwise imperfect, and you would have
felt the effects of it. It is over now. You are a man. The dangers
to which your nature was open are, I trust, at an end. I wish you to
be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and pray God to conduct
and strengthen you both."
Sir Austin's mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly.
True or not, his words were idle to his son: his talk of dangers
over, and happiness, mockery.
Richard coldly took his father's extended hand.
"We will go to her," said the baronet. "I will leave you at her
door."
Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which
the colour rushed, Richard said: "A husband who has been unfaithful
to his wife may go to her there, sir?"
It was horrible, it was cruel: Richard knew that. He wanted no
advice on such a matter, having fully resolved what to do. Yesterday
he would have listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and
done what was to be done humbly before God and her: now in the
recklessness of his misery he had as little pity for any other soul
as for his own. Sir Austin's brows were deep drawn down.
"What did you say, Richard?"
Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this--the worst he could
hear--this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over,
and cast aside--could it be?
Richard said: "I told you all but the very words when we last
parted. What else do you think would have kept me from her?"
Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: "What brings you to
her now?"
"That will be between us two," was the reply.
Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible. He spoke
from a wrathful heart: "You will not dare to take her without"----
"No, sir," Richard interrupted him, "I shall not. Have no fear."
"Then you did not love your wife?"
"Did I not?" A smile passed faintly over Richard's face.
"Did you care so much for this--this other person?"
"So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I
had none."
O base human nature! Then how? then why? A thousand questions rose
in the baronet's mind. Bessy Berry could have answered them every
one.
"Poor child! poor child!" he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.
Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son--her true
forgiving heart--it seemed she should be spared this misery.
He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction between
women and men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with
physical and moral citations. His argument carried him so far, that
to hear him one would have imagined he thought the sin in men small
indeed. His words were idle.
"She must know it," said Richard, sternly. "I will go to her now,
sir, if you please."
Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself,
confounded his principles, made nonsense of all his theories. He
could not induce his son to waver in his resolve. Ultimately, their
good-night being interchanged, he understood that the happiness of
Raynham depended on Lucy's mercy. He had no fears of her sweet
heart, but it was a strange thing to have come to. On which should
the accusation fall--on science, or on human nature?
He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times
breathing contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted
suspicion of his own wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he
deserved that blow from his son which had plunged him into
wretchedness.
Richard went straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy sleeper, and
told him to have his mare saddled and waiting at the park gates East
within an hour. Tom's nearest approach to a hero was to be a
faithful slave to his master, and in doing this he acted to his
conception of that high and glorious character. He got up and
heroically dashed his head into cold water. "She shall be ready,
sir," he nodded.
"Tom! if you don't see me back here at Raynham, your money will go
on being paid to you."
"Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard," said Tom.
"And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom."
"Mrs. Richard, sir?" Tom stared. "God bless me, Mr. Richard"----
"No questions. You'll do what I say."
"Ay, sir; that I will. Did'n Isle o' Wight."
The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood, and he had to
walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door. That infamous
conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left
him the feelings of a man when he thought of it.
The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door,
and stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment
that passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the
change in her. He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman--a blooming
woman: for pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour
was rich and deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through
the loose dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made
his heart thump and his eyes swim.
"My darling!" each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was
fastened on his.
They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting
her, whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over
her, and clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and
in the oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of
her embrace. Heaven granted him that. He placed her in a chair and
knelt at her feet with both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her
eyes never quitted him: their light as the light on a rolling wave.
This young creature, commonly so frank and straightforward, was
broken with bashfulness in her husband's arms--womanly bashfulness
on the torrent of womanly love; tenfold more seductive than the
bashfulness of girlhood. Terrible tenfold the loss of her seemed
now, as distantly--far on the horizon of memory--the fatal truth
returned to him.
Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.
The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the
dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and
fluttering, and glittering, but constant: the light of them as the
light on a rolling wave.
And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven! And
his she was! a woman--his wife! The temptation to take her, and be
dumb, was all powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong
as to be the prayer of his vital forces. Again he strained her to
him, but this time it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure--with
exultation and defiance. One instant of this. Lucy, whose pure
tenderness had now surmounted the first wild passion of their
meeting, bent back her head from her surrendered body, and said
almost voicelessly, her underlids wistfully quivering: "Come and
see him--baby;" and then in great hope of the happiness she was
going to give her husband, and share with him, and in tremour and
doubt of what his feelings would be, she blushed, and her brows
worked: she tried to throw off the strangeness of a year of
separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.
"Darling! come and see him. He is here." She spoke more clearly,
though no louder.
Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he suffered
himself to be led to the other side of the bed. His heart began
rapidly throbbing at the sight of a little rosy-curtained cot
covered with lace like milky summer cloud.
It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked on that
child's face.
"Stop!" he cried suddenly.
Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it should
have been disturbed.
"Lucy, come back."
"What is it, darling?" said she, in alarm at his voice and the grip
he had unwittingly given her hand.
O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must face death,
perhaps die and be torn from his darling--his wife and his child;
and that ere he went forth, ere he could dare to see his child and
lean his head reproachfully on his young wife's breast--for the last
time, it might be--he must stab her to the heart, shatter the image
she held of him.
"Lucy!" She saw him wrenched with agony, and her own face took the
whiteness of his--she bending forward to him, all her faculties
strung to hearing.
He held her two hands that she might look on him and not spare the
horrible wounds he was going to lay open to her eyes.
"Lucy. Do you know why I came to you to-night?"
She moved her lips repeating his words.
"Lucy. Have you guessed why I did not come before?"
Her head shook widened eyes.
"Lucy. I did not come because I was not worthy of my wife! Do you
understand?"
"Darling," she faltered plaintively, and hung crouching under him,
"what have I done to make you angry with me?"
"O beloved!" cried he, the tears bursting out of his eyes. "O
beloved!" was all he could say, kissing her hands passionately.
She waited, reassured, but in terror.
"Lucy. I stayed away from you--I could not come to you, because ...
I dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved! I could not come
because I was a coward: because--hear me--this was the reason: I
have broken my marriage oath."
Again her lips moved. She caught at a dim fleshless meaning in
them. "But you love me? Richard! My husband! you love me?"
"Yes. I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but you."
"Darling! Kiss me."
"Have you understood what I have told you?"
"Kiss me," she said.
He did not join lips. "I have come to you to-night to ask your
forgiveness."
Her answer was: "Kiss me."
"Can you forgive a man so base?"
"But you love me, Richard?"
"Yes: that I can say before God. I love you, and I have betrayed
you, and am unworthy of you--not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel
at your feet, to breathe the same air with you."
Her eyes shone brilliantly. "You love me! you love me, darling!" And
as one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, she said:
"My husband! my darling! you will never leave me? We never shall be
parted again?"
He drew his breath painfully. To smooth her face growing rigid with
fresh fears of his silence, he met her mouth. That kiss in which she
spoke what her soul had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily
from it, and in her manner reminded him of his first vision of her
on the summer morning in the field of the meadow-sweet. He held her
to him, and thought then of a holier picture: of Mother and Child:
of the sweet wonders of the life she had made real to him.
Had he not absolved his conscience? At least the pangs to come made
him think so. He now followed her leading hand. Lucy whispered: "You
mustn't disturb him--mustn't touch him, dear!" and with dainty
fingers drew off the covering to the little shoulder. One arm of the
child was out along the pillow; the small hand open. His baby-mouth
was pouted full; the dark lashes of his eyes seemed to lie on his
plump cheeks. Richard stooped lower down to him, hungering for some
movement as a sign that he lived. Lucy whispered. "He sleeps like
you, Richard--one arm under his head." Great wonder, and the stir of
a grasping tenderness was in Richard. He breathed quick and soft,
bending lower, till Lucy's curls, as she nestled and bent with him,
rolled on the crimson quilt of the cot. A smile went up the plump
cheeks: forthwith the bud of a mouth was in rapid motion. The young
mother whispered, blushing: "He's dreaming of me," and the simple
words did more than Richard's eyes to make him see what was. Then
Lucy began to hum and buzz sweet baby-language, and some of the tiny
fingers stirred, and he made as if to change his cosy position, but
reconsidered, and deferred it, with a peaceful little sigh. Lucy
whispered: "He is such a big fellow. Oh! when you see him awake he
is so like you, Richard."
He did not hear her immediately: it seemed a bit of heaven dropped
there in his likeness: the more human the fact of the child grew the
more heavenly it seemed. His son! his child! should he ever see him
awake? At the thought, he took the words that had been spoken, and
started from the dream he had been in. "Will he wake soon, Lucy?"
"Oh no! not yet, dear: not for hours. I would have kept him awake
for you, but he was _so_ sleepy."
Richard stood back from the cot. He thought that if he saw the eyes
of his boy, and had him once on his heart, he never should have
force to leave him. Then he looked down on him, again struggled to
tear himself away. Two natures warred in his bosom, or it may have
been the Magian Conflict still going on. He had come to see his
child once and to make peace with his wife before it should be too
late. Might he not stop with them? Might he not relinquish that
devilish pledge? Was not divine happiness here offered to him?--If
foolish Ripton had not delayed to tell him of his interview with
Mountfalcon all might have been well. But pride said it was
impossible. And then injury spoke. For why was he thus base and
spotted to the darling of his love? A mad pleasure in the prospect
of wreaking vengeance on the villain who had laid the trap for him,
once more blackened his brain. If he would stay he could not. So he
resolved, throwing the burden on Fate. The struggle was over, but
oh, the pain!
Lucy beheld the tears streaming hot from his face on the child's
cot. She marvelled at such excess of emotion. But when his chest
heaved, and the extremity of mortal anguish appeared to have seized
him, her heart sank, and she tried to get him in her arms. He turned
away from her and went to the window. A half-moon was over the lake.
"Look!" he said, "do you remember our rowing there one night, and we
saw the shadow of the cypress? I wish I could have come early
to-night that we might have had another row, and I have heard you
sing there!"
"Darling!" said she, "will it make you happier if I go with you now?
I will."
"No, Lucy. Lucy, you are brave!"
"Oh, no! that I'm not. I thought so once. I know I am not now."
"Yes! to have lived--the child on your heart--and never to have
uttered a complaint!--you are brave. O my Lucy! my wife! you that
have made me man! I called you a coward. I remember it. I was the
coward--_I_ the wretched vain fool! Darling! I am going to leave you
now. You are brave, and you will bear it. Listen: in two days, or
three, I may be back--back for good, if you will accept me. Promise
me to go to bed quietly. Kiss the child for me, and tell him his
father has seen him. He will learn to speak soon. Will he soon
speak, Lucy?"
Dreadful suspicion kept her speechless; she could only clutch one
arm of his with both her hands.
"Going?" she presently gasped.
"For two or three days. No more--I hope."
"To-night?"
"Yes. Now."
"Going now? my husband!" her faculties abandoned her.
"You will be brave, my Lucy!"
"Richard! my darling husband! Going? What is it takes you from me?"
But questioning no further, she fell on her knees, and cried
piteously to him to stay--not to leave them. Then she dragged him to
the little sleeper, and urged him to pray by his side, and he did,
but rose abruptly from his prayer when he had muttered a few broken
words--she praying on with tight-strung nerves, in the faith that
what she said to the interceding Mother above would be stronger than
human hands on him. Nor could he go while she knelt there.
And he wavered. He had not reckoned on her terrible suffering. She
came to him, quiet. "I knew you would remain." And taking his hand,
innocently fondling it: "Am I so changed from her he loved? You will
not leave me, dear?" But dread returned, and the words quavered as
she spoke them.
He was almost vanquished by the loveliness of her womanhood. She
drew his hand to her heart, and strained it there under one breast.
"Come: lie on my heart," she murmured with a smile of holy
sweetness.
He wavered more, and drooped to her, but summoning the powers of
hell, kissed her suddenly, cried the words of parting, and hurried
to the door. It was over in an instant. She cried out his name,
clinging to him wildly, and was adjured to be brave, for he would be
dishonoured if he did not go. Then she was shaken off.
Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child,
which showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any
answer to her applications for admittance, she made bold to enter.
There she saw Lucy, the child in her lap, sitting on the floor
senseless:--she had taken it from its sleep and tried to follow her
husband with it as her strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.
"Oh my! oh my!" Mrs. Berry moaned, "and I just now thinkin' they was
so happy!"
Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed by degrees to
revive Lucy, and heard what had brought her to that situation.
"Go to his father," said Mrs. Berry. "Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O! Go,
my love, and every horse in Raynham shall be out after 'm. This is
what men brings us to! Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah! Or you take
blessed baby, and I'll go."
The baronet himself knocked at the door. "What is this?" he said. "I
heard a noise and a step descend."
"It's Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from his wife and
babe! Rum-te-um-te-iddledy--Oh, my goodness! what sorrow's come on
us!" and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried
vehemently, and Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced him and sang to
him with drawn lips and tears dropping over him. And if the
Scientific Humanist to the day of his death forgets the sight of
those two poor true women jigging on their wretched hearts to calm
the child, he must have very little of the human in him.
There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.