John Parke woke next morning to see his wife in her dressing gown,
moving vaguely about the room, a shadow against the full summer light
that came in at all the windows. He could not make out at first what she
was doing, prowling about in a curious monotonous round from window to
window, pausing to look out, as it seemed, at the edge of the blind,
first of one, then of another. He watched her for a little while in
vague alarm. During all this time a vague but painful suspicion was in
John’s mind. He knew better than anyone how she had looked forward to a
new state of affairs. Had she not drawn even him to that vile
anticipation to plan and calculate upon the boy’s death? The pain of the
thought that he had done so made more intense his sense of the terrible
revulsion in her mind when all these horrible hopes came to an end. He
was not a man who naturally divined what was going on in the minds of
others, but the movement in his own, on this occasion, and the
instinctive knowledge which long years of companionship had vaguely,
magnetically conveyed to him about his wife--not a matter of reflection
or reason, but simply of impression--kept a dull light about Letitia
which surrounded no other person upon earth. Something like sympathy
mingled with and increased his power of comprehending during this
dreadful crisis. How would she make up her mind to it, he asked himself,
notwithstanding the horror and shame with which he thought of the
calculations he himself had been seduced into sharing. He knew very well
how little she liked to be foiled, how she struggled against
disappointment, and got her will in defiance of every combination of
circumstances. During all the previous day he had been very uneasy,
certain that in her long absence she was planning something, wondering
what she could plan that would have any effect upon the present state of
affairs--fearing--he knew not what. John could not allow himself to
think that his wife would contemplate harming the boy. Oh, no, no! such
a thought was not in his mind. Letitia had her faults. She had never
been kind to Mar. She had thought of him as an interloper, as an
intruder, as supplanting Duke--and she had not concealed her feeling.
But harm him--by so much as a touch. Oh, no! no! Nevertheless, John had
been very uneasy all day, and even in his sleep this gnawing discomfort
had not left him. He had dreamed of deathbeds and dying persons, and of
strange scenes of chaos in which she was always present, though he knew
not for what purpose. And when he woke suddenly and saw her wandering
about the room in the high clear morning light like a ghost, all the
uneasiness of the previous day, all the troubled dreams of the night
came back upon his heart. He watched her for a minute without making any
sign, and then he called “Letitia!” His voice made her start
violently--but she came towards him at once, wrapping her dressing-gown
round her as though she felt cold.
“Isn’t it very early? Why are you prowling about at this hour?”
“Yes, I suppose it’s early. I couldn’t sleep--one cannot always sleep
when one would.”
“You are not such a bad sleeper as you think,” said John--as have said
before him, in the calm of experience, the partners of many a restless
wife and husband. “And I wish,” he added impatiently, “that you’d let me
sleep, at least.”
Instead of quenching him by a sharp word, as was Letitia’s wont, she
came towards the bedside and sat down, turning her back to the light.
“John,” she said, “there has been a great deal happening while you have
been asleep.”
“What?” he cried. He raised himself up on his elbow, terrified,
threatening. “Letitia, for God’s sake, don’t tell me that anything has
happened to the boy.”
“Oh, the boy!” she cried, with an impatience that was balm to his heart.
Then she went on, not looking at him, “Fancy, who arrived last
night--Mary, looking for her child----”
“Lady Frogmore!”
“Mary--and calling for her child--she who always denied that she ever
had one. She came flying upon me in his room, and seized hold of me and
dragged me out of it; mad--mad--as mad again--as--as a March hare.” Her
lips parted in a harsh laugh. “I believe she would have torn me to
pieces if I had not taken to my heels. You know there is nothing in the
world I am so frightened of as madness--nothing! I took to my heels----”
“Wait a bit,” said John, “wait, I don’t understand. She came in the
middle of the night to see her child?”
“Agnes must have put her up to it. Agnes must have got it into her head
at last that she had a child.”
“And you were in his room? What were you doing in his room, Letitia? You
have never nursed him. You were asleep when I came upstairs.”
She gave him a momentary glance--half of defiance, half of alarm--and
yet she had thought of this, too. “I fancied the nurse looked
sleepy--the night nurse, you know, John--I thought she looked drowsy,
and I stole back to listen. Well, I did, for she was asleep. I went into
see that all was right for the night--his drink----”
Even Letitia’s nerve was not enough for this. She shivered. “It is cold
at this hour in the morning,” she said, her teeth chattering.
“Did you give him anything to drink?” John would not have dared to
confess to himself what dread apprehension went through his heart. And
it was dreadful for him to talk of it, though she was so wonderful in
self-command.
“I?--oh, no. I gave him nothing. I have not nursed him, you know. I saw
that all was there that he could want, and was going to rouse the nurse,
when somebody came upon me and took me by the shoulders. At first I
thought it was you.”
“Why should you think that I would take you by the shoulders?” His
suspicion was not quenched, but seized upon every word.
“Yes,” she said, “why should I? I thought, perhaps, you were angry with
me for being there at all.”
“Why should I be angry with you,” he asked again, “for being there?”
never taking his eyes from her face.
On her part she never looked towards him, but continued impatiently, “I
don’t suppose I thought of the whys and the wherefores. I thought it was
you, that was all. And when I found it was Mary--I don’t know whether
she dragged me out or I pushed her out. Above all I feared a noise to
wake the boy.”
John gave her a long searching look. He did not want to find her out. He
wanted her to clear herself from all suspicions, from all doubt. “Ah,
the boy!” he said, with a long-drawn breath, “the poor boy! Did you wake
him? It might have been as much as his life was worth.”
“You think of nothing else,” she said. Then with a sort of indulgence to
his weakness, “Your boy never stirred.” She breathed forth heavily a
sigh--was it of thankfulness?
“I suppose he was sleeping,” she added, with a sort of bravado, “I did
not look.”
“Good God!” cried John, springing up, “was there any doubt? Had you any
doubt?” He seized his dressing-gown and thrust his arms into the
sleeves, and his feet into slippers.
“Aye,” cried Letitia, still without a movement, without even looking at
him, “go and see. Nothing would make me face that woman again.”
She sat idly playing with a ring upon her finger, turning it round and
round, but neither raised her head nor looked at him, though he paused
before her with again the searching look of anxiety which he dared not
define.
“Letitia,” he said, “for God’s sake what do you mean? There is something
in all this I don’t understand.”
“Ah, don’t I speak plain enough?” she said. “It’s Mary come back, and as
mad as a March hare.”
“And you left her--a woman--in that state--alone with the boy, just out
of the jaws of death? What’s that on your gown?”
She looked at it, bending forward to see--a long streak as of something
spilt. The stain was stiff, giving a rigid line to the stuff--and what
John suspected, feared it to be, cannot be put into words. His eyes grew
wild with terror, and his voice hoarse, as he repeated:--
“On your gown? What is it? What is it?”
“Oh, the milk!” Letitia said. It brought everything before her, and a
shiver ran over her again; but also a laugh, which, though tuneless
enough, gave the distracted man by her side some comfort, for she could
not have laughed surely if it had been----“We spilt it between us,”
Letitia said, “and mad as she was she drew back for that, not to spoil
her dress. She had her senses enough for that.”
He stood in front of her for a moment, undecided what to do, when she
suddenly raised her head and cried sharply, “John, why don’t you go and
see?”
“I can’t understand you,” he said. “You mean more than I know.”
She looked up at him again and laughed in a way that froze his blood.
“Don’t I always?” she said, with a tone of contempt. Then added,
stamping on the floor, “Go--go and see what has happened. I will never
see that woman again.”
John went softly along the corridor, half dressed, ashamed, miserable.
Something had happened more than he could understand, perhaps more than
he would ever understand. The house was all silent, wrapt as in a
garment in the morning sunshine, which came in by the great staircase
windows and flooded everything. It was still very early. His step made a
sound which ran all through and through it. He could not be noiseless as
the women were, who stole about, and met, and had their encounters, and
nobody was ever the wiser. He thought it was in the middle of the night
that this arrival must have occurred which seemed to him like a dream,
and which as he passed through the sleeping house and felt the stillness
of it he began to think must be but some wild fancy of his wife’s,
something which could not be true. When he pushed open the door of the
ante-room a dark figure rose hurriedly out of a chair, and met him with
the dazed look of a person disturbed and half asleep. “Miss Hill!” he
cried. Then it was true!
She put up her hand and said “Hush.” Then, after a moment, “He is
asleep, like a baby; he has never stirred.”
“Are you sure--that he is asleep?”
“Oh, I thought that myself,” she cried, understanding him. “He was so
quiet. Yes, yes, he is asleep; breathing faintly, but you can hear him.
Oh, safe and sound asleep!”
“My wife told me--his mother----”
“She is there,” said Agnes, beckoning him to the door of the inner room.
He stood and looked in for a moment, with his clouded and troubled face,
leaning against the lintel. Mary’s ear had been caught by the sound. She
looked up and met his eyes with that ethereal clearness of countenance,
the exaltation of her aroused and awakened soul. She looked him in the
face with a mild serenity and peace and smiled in recognition, then
turned her eyes to the bed as if to show him the boy softly sleeping
there. Behind, the nurse still slept in the easy chair. To John it
seemed as if it were all a dream, of which there was no explanation. How
did it come about that the sick room had passed into the keeping of
these two, arriving mysteriously during the night, whom his wife must
have risen from his side to receive, of whom he had heard nothing? The
nurse asleep, all the usual faces gone, the mother who had disowned him
sitting in that attitude of love by Mar’s side--what did it all mean?
“This is all very strange,” he said, drawing back from the door. “I find
you here in possession whom I thought far away--and the mother who was
so estranged. Did you come down from the skies? Is it safe to leave her
there? Is she----”
Agnes looked at the man who was comparatively little known to her, who
was a man, frightening and disturbing in his strange undress in the
midst of the silent house. She was an elderly single woman, unaccustomed
to give any account of herself to strange men, and her weariness and all
the unusual circumstances told upon her. Her lips quivered and her eyes
filled. “Oh,” she said, “Mr. Parke, do not think we meant any--any
reproach. Things have happened that have brought my sister to her full
senses--and to remember everything. I could not keep her from her
boy--you would not keep her from her boy----”
“Not if she is sane; not if it is safe,” said John. He looked in again
through the half closed door. Once more Mary’s keen ear caught the
sound; and again she turned towards him her face, which was like the
morning sky. She had never been beautiful in her best and youngest days.
Now with her grey hair ruffled by the night’s vigil, her mild eyes
cleared from any film that had been upon them, lambent and inspired with
watchful love, her look overawed the anxious spectator. He stepped back
again with a sort of apologetic humility. “I don’t understand it,” he
said. “You seem to have some meaning among you that I don’t know: but I
cannot be the one to disturb her. I hope--I hope that I am making no
mistake----”
“You are making no mistake, Mr. Parke,” said Agnes. “Mar was my child
more than hers; he was my baby. My heart was nearly broken, for I
thought he was dying when I came here last night. But I trust him in his
mother’s hands. I give place to her because it is her right. Do you
think I would leave my boy to her if she were not in her full senses,
ready to defend him, ready to protect him----?”
She stopped, choked with the sobs, which, in her great exhaustion and
emotion, Agnes could no longer entirely keep down.
“To defend him--to protect him? From what? from what?” John said.
“Oh, how can I tell? From the perils and dangers of the night; from
carelessness and any ill wish.”
John’s voice was choked as that of Agnes’ had been. “There is no ill
wish,” he said--“none--to Mar in this house.”
He saw, as he spoke, the traces on the floor of something spilt like
that on his wife’s gown--and some fragments of the broken glass which
had escaped Agnes’ scrutiny. He did not know what they meant. He was not
clever, nor had he any imagination to divine; but something went through
him like a cold blast, chilling him to the heart. He paused a moment,
staring at the floor, and the words died away on his lips.
When John returned to his wife’s room Letitia was in bed, and to all
appearance fast asleep. The poor man was glad, if such a word could be
applied to anything he was capable of feeling. He withdrew softly into
his dressing-room, and sat there for a long time with his head in his
hands and his face hidden. What to think of the mysterious things that
had passed that night he did not know.