Months went by. The slight overtures Lynette had made towards a more
familiar friendship had ceased since that rebuff of Saxham's. She had
never since set foot in his third-floor bedroom, where Little Miss Muffet
and Georgy Porgy and the whole regiment of nursery-rhyme characters,
attired in the brilliant aniline hues adored of inartistic,
frankly-barbaric babyhood, adorned the top of the brown-paper dado, and
flourished on the fireplace-tiles.
Only a few weeks more, he said to himself, and he would set her free.
Before the natural craving for love, and life, and happiness should brim
the cup of her fair sweet womanhood to overflowing; before her sex should
rise in desperate revolt against himself her gaoler, Death should unlock
her prison-doors and strike the fetters from those slender wrists, and
point to Hope beckoning her to cross the threshold of a new life.
Soon, very soon now. The two-ounce vial that held the swift dismissing
pang was in the locked drawer of the writing-table beside the
whisky-flask. When he was alone and undisturbed--for Lynette seldom came
to his consulting-room now--Saxham would take it out and dandle it, and
hold it in his hands.
He would put the vial back presently, and lock the drawer, and, it being
dark, perhaps would delay to light his lamp that he might torture himself
with looking at that pitiless shadow-play, that humble comedy-drama of
sweet, common, unattainable things that was every night renewed in those
two rooms over the garage at the bottom of the yard.
There was a third performer in the shadow-play now. You could hear him
roaring lustily at morn and noon and milky eve. The Wonderfullest Baby you
ever!
When W. Keyse was invited by Saxham to inspect his son and heir, crimson,
and pulpy, and squirming in a flannel wrap, the Adam's apple in the lean
throat of the proud father jumped, and his ugly, honest eyes blinked
behind salt water. The nipper had grabbed at his ear as he stooped down.
And that made the Fourth Time, and he hadn't even thanked the Doctor yet!
A date, he hoped, would arrive when a chalk or two of that mounting score
might be wiped off the board. He said so to Mrs. Keyse, the first time she
was allowed to sit up and play at doing a bit of needlework. Not that she
did a stitch, and charnce it! With her eyes--beautiful eyes, with that new
look of mother-love in them; proud eyes, with that inexhaustible store of
riches all her own,--worshipping the crinkly red snub nose and the funny
moving mouth, and the little downy head, and everything else that goes to
make up a properly-constituted Baby.
"I think the time'll come, deer. Watch out, an' one d'y you'll see!"
"I'll watch it!" affirmed W. Keyse. "And wot are you cranin' your neck
for, tryin' to look out o' winder? Blessed if I ever see such a precious
old Dutch!----"
The song was in the mouths of the people that year. She laughed, and
rubbed her pale cheek against his.
"You be my eyes, deer. Peep and see if the Doctor is in 'is room."
It was ten o'clock on a shining May morning, and the clouds that raced
over great grimy London were white, and there were patches of blue
between. The trees in the squares were dressed in new green leaves, and
the irises and ranunculuses in the parks were out, and the policemen had
shed their heavy uniforms, and instead of hyacinths behind the glass there
were pots of tulips in bloom upon the window-sills of the two rooms over
the garage. And the Doctor, who had been seeing patients ever since nine,
was sitting at the writing-table, said W. Keyse, with his 'ead upon 'is
'ands.
"Like as if 'e was tired, deer, or un'appy? Or tired an un'appy both?"
"Stryte, you 'ave it!" admitted W. Keyse, after cautious inspection.
"The Doctor--don't let 'im see you lookin' at 'im, darlin', or 'e might
think, which Good Gracious know how wrong it 'ud be, as you was a kind o'
Peepin' Pry--the Doctor 'ave fell orf an' chynged a good deal lately--in
'is looks, I mean!" said Mrs. Keyse, tucking in the corner of the flannel
over the little downy head. "Wasted in 'is flesh, like--got 'oller round
the eyes----"
"So 'e 'as!" W. Keyse whistled and slapped his leg. "An' I bin' noticin'
it on me own for a long while back--now I come to think of it. Woddyou
pipe's the matter wiv 'im? Not ill? Lumme! if 'e was ill----" The eyes of
W. Keyse became circular with consternation.
"No, no, deer!" She reassured him, in his ignorance that the maladies of
the soul are more agonising far than those that afflict the body.
"Down'arted, like, an' 'opeless an'--an' lonely----"
Downhearted, and hopeless, and lonely! The jaw of W. Keyse dropped, and
his ugly eyes became circular with sheer astonishment.
"_Him!_ Wiv a beautiful 'ouse to live in--an' Carriage Toffs with Titles
fair beggin' 'im to come an' feel their pulses an' be pyde for it, an'
Scientific Institooshuns an' 'Orspital Committees fightin' to git 'im on
their staffs--an' all the pypers praisin' 'im for wot 'e done at
Gueldersdorp, an' Government tippin' 'im the 'Ow Do? an' thank you kindly,
Mister!--an'----" W. Keyse could only suppose that Mrs. Keyse was playing
a bit of gaff on hers truly--"and him with a wife, too! Married an'
'appy, an' goin' to be 'appier yet!" He pointed to the little red snub
nose peeping between the folds of the flannel. "When a little nipper like
that comes----"
She reddened, paled, burst out crying.
"O William! William----"
Her William kissed her, and dried her tears. He called it mopping her
dial, but you have not forgotten that, as the upper house-and-parlour-maid
had at first said, both Her and Him were plainly descended from the Lowest
Circles. She had melted afterwards, on learning that Mrs. Keyse had been
actually mentioned in Despatches for carrying tea under fire to the
prisoners at the Fort; had sought her society, lent paper-patterns, and
imparted, in confidence, what she knew of the secret of Saxham's wedded
life.
"Dear William! My good, kind Love! Best I should 'urt you, deer, if 'urt
you 'ave to be. You see them three large winders covered wiv lovely lace?"
"'Ers--Mrs. Saxham's!" He nodded, trying to look wise.
"Yes, darlin'. Mrs. Saxham's bedroom and dressin'-room they belongs to.
I've bin inside the bedroom wiv the upper 'ouse-an'-parlour-myde, an' a
Fairy Princess in a Drury Lane Pantomime might 'ave a bigger place to
sleep in--but not a beautifuller. When the Foreign Young Person come in of
evenin's to git 'er lady dressed for dinner, she snaps up the lights,
bein' a kind soul, before she draws the blinds, to give me a charnst like,
to see in." She stroked the tweed sleeve. "An' once or twice Mrs. Saxham
'as come in before they'd bin pull down, an' then--O William!--there was
everythink in that room on Gawd's good earth a 'usband could ask for to
make 'im 'appy, except the wife's 'art beatin' warm and lovin' in the
middle of it all!"
"Cripps!... You don't never mean ...?" He gasped. "Wot? Don't the Doctor
make no odds to 'er? A Man Like That?" ...
She clung to the heart that loved her, and told him what she had heard....
And if Saxham had known how two of the unconscious actors in his
shadow-play pitied him, the knowledge would have been as vitriol poured
into an open wound.