SEVERED.
Sir Tom came home later, so much later than he intended that he entered
the house with such a sense of compunction as had not visited him since
the days when the alarm of being caught was a part of the pleasure. He
had no fear of a lecture from Lucy, whose gifts were not of that kind;
but he was partially conscious of having neglected her on her first
night in town, as well as having sinned against her in matters more
serious. And he did not know how to explain his detention at the
Contessa's new house, or the matters which he had been discussing there.
It was a sensible relief to him not to find her in any of the
sitting-rooms, all dark and closed up, except his own room, in which
there was no trace of her. She had gone to bed, which was so sensible,
like Lucy's unexaggerated natural good sense: he smiled to
himself--though, at the same time, a wondering question within himself,
whether she felt at all, passed through his mind--a reflection full of
mingled disappointment and satisfaction. But when, a full hour after his
return, after a tranquil period of reflection, he went leisurely
upstairs, expecting to find her peacefully asleep, and found her not,
nor any evidence that she had ever been there, a great wave of alarm
passed over the mind of Sir Tom. He paused confounded, looking at her
vacant place, startled beyond expression. "Lucy!" he cried, looking in
his dismay into every corner, into his own dressing-room, and even into
the large wardrobe where her dresses hung, like shells and husks, which
she had laid aside. And then he made an agitated pause, standing in the
middle of the room, not knowing what to think. It was by this time about
two in the morning; the middle of the night, according to Lucy. Where
could she have gone? Then he bethought himself with an immediate relief,
which was soon replaced by poignant anxiety, of the only possible reason
for her absence--a reason which would explain everything--little Tom.
When this thought occurred to him all the excitement that had been in
Sir Tom's mind disappeared in a moment, and he thought of nothing but
that baby lying, perhaps tossing uneasily, upon his little bed, his
mother watching over him; most sacred group on earth to him, who,
whatever his faults might be, loved them both dearly. He took a candle
in his hand and, stepping lightly, went up the stairs to the nursery
door. There was no sound of wailing within, no pitiful little cry to
tell the tale; all was still and dark. He tried the door softly, but it
would not open. Then another terror awoke, and for the moment took his
breath from him. What had happened to the child? Sir Tom suffered enough
at this moment to have expiated many sins. There came upon him a vision
of the child extended motionless upon his bed, and his mother by him
refusing to be comforted. What could it mean? The door looked as if hope
had departed. He knocked softly, yet imperatively, divided between the
horror of these thoughts and the gentle every-day sentiment which
forbade any noise at little Tom's door. It was some time before he got
any reply--a time which seemed to him interminable. Then he suddenly
heard Lucy's voice close to the door whispering. There had been no sound
of any footsteps. Had she been there all the time listening to all his
appeals and taking no notice?
"Open the door," he said anxiously. "Speak to me. What is the matter? Is
he ill? Have you sent for the doctor? Let me in."
"We are all shut up and settled for the night," said Lucy, through the
door.
"Shut up for the night? Has he been very ill?" Sir Tom cried.
"Oh, hush, you will wake him; no, not very ill: but I am going to stay
with him," said the voice inside with a quiver in it.
"Lucy, what does this mean? You are concealing something from me. Have
you had the doctor? Good God, tell me. What is the matter? Can't I see
my boy?"
"There is nothing--nothing to be alarmed about," said Lucy from within.
"He is asleep--he is--doing well. Oh! go to bed and don't mind us. I am
going to stay with him."
"Don't mind you? that is so easy," he cried, with a broken laugh; then
the silence stealing to his heart, he cried out, "Is the child----?" But
Sir Tom could not say the word. He shivered, standing outside the closed
door. The mystery seemed incomprehensible, save on the score of some
great calamity. The bitterness of death went over him; but then he asked
himself what reason there could be to conceal from him any terrible
sudden blow. Lucy would have wanted him in such a case, not kept him
from her. In this dread moment of sudden panic he thought of everything
but the real cause, which made a more effectual barrier between them
than that closed door.
"He is well enough now," said Lucy's voice, coming faintly out of the
darkness. "Oh, indeed, there is nothing the matter. Please go away; go
to bed. It is so late. I am going to stay with him."
"Lucy," said Sir Tom, "I have never been shut out before. There is
something you are concealing from me. Let me see him and then you shall
do as you please."
There was a little pause, and then slowly, reluctantly, Lucy opened the
door. She was still fully dressed as she had been for dinner. There was
not a particle of colour in her face. Her eyes had a scared look and
were surrounded by wide circles, as if the orbit had been hollowed out.
She stood aside to let him pass without a word. The room in which little
Tom slept was an inner room. There was scarcely any light in either,
nothing but the faint glimmer of the night-lamp. The sleeping-room was
hushed and full of the most tranquil quiet, the regular soft breathing
of the sleeping child in his little bed, and of his nurse by him, who
was as completely unaware as he of any intrusion. Sir Tom stole in and
looked at his boy, in the pretty baby attitude of perfect repose, his
little arms thrown up over his head. The anxiety vanished from his
heart, but not the troubled sense of something wrong, a mystery which
altogether baffled him. Mystery had no place here in this little
sanctuary of innocence. But what did it mean? He stole out again to
where Lucy stood, scared and silent in her white dress, with a jewelled
pendant at her neck which gleamed strangely in the half light.
"He seems quite well now. What was it, and why are you so anxious?" he
asked. "Did the doctor----"
"There was no need for a doctor. It is only--myself. I must stay with
him, he might want me----" And nobody else does, Lucy was about to say,
but pride and modesty restrained her. Her husband looked at her
earnestly. He perceived with a curious pang of astonishment that she
drew away from him, standing as far off as the limited space permitted
and avoiding his eye.
"I don't understand it," he said; "there is something underneath; either
he has been more ill than you will let me know, or--there is something
else----"
She gave him no answering look, made no wondering exclamation what could
there be else? as he had hoped; but replied hurriedly, as she had done
before, "I want to stay with him. I must stay with him for to-night----"
It was with the most extraordinary sense of some change, which he could
not fathom or divine, that Sir Tom consented at last to leave his wife
in the child's room and go to his own. What did it mean? What had
happened to him, or was about to happen? He could not explain to himself
the aspect of the slight little youthful figure in her airy white dress,
with the diamonds still at her throat, careless of the hour and time,
standing there in the middle of the night, shrinking away from him,
forlorn and wakeful with her scared eyes. At this hour on ordinary
occasions Lucy was fast asleep. When she came to see her boy, if society
had kept her up late, it was in the ease of a dressing-gown, not with
any cold glitter of ornaments. And to see her shrink and draw herself
away in that strange repugnance from his touch and shadow confounded
him. He was not angry, as he might have been in another case, but
pitiful to the bottom of his heart. What could have come to Lucy? Half
a dozen times he turned back on his way to his room. What meaning could
she have in it? What could have happened to her? Her manifest shrinking
from him had terrified him, and filled his mind with confusion. But
controversy of any kind in the child's room at the risk of waking him in
the middle of the night was impossible, and no doubt, he tried to say to
himself, it must be some panic she had taken, some sudden alarm for the
child, justified by reasons which she did not like to explain to him
till the morning light restored her confidence. Women were so, he had
often heard: and the women he had known in his youth had certainly been
so--unreasoning creatures, subject to their imagination, taking fright
when no occasion for fright was, incapable of explaining. Lucy had never
been like this; but yet Lucy, though sensible, was a woman too, and if
it is not permitted to a woman to take an unreasoning panic about her
only child, she must be hardly judged indeed. Sir Tom was not a hard
judge. When he got over the painful sense that there must be something
more in this than met the eye, he was half glad to find that Lucy was
like other women--a dear little fool, not always sensible. He thought
almost the better of her for it, he said to himself. She would laugh
herself at her panic, whatever it was, when little Tom woke up fresh and
fair in the morning light.
With this idea he did what he could to satisfy himself. The situation
was strange, unprecedented in his experience; but he had many subjects
of thought on his own part which returned to his mind as the surprise of
the moment calmed down. He had a great deal to think about. Old
difficulties which seemed to have passed away for long years were now
coming back again to embarrass and confuse him. "Our pleasant vices are
made the whips to scourge us," he said to himself. The past had come
back to him like the opening of a book, no longer merely frivolous and
amusing, as in the Contessa's talk, touched with all manner of light
emotions, but bitter, with tragedy in it, and death and desolation.
Death and life: he had heard enough of the dead to make them seem alive
again, and of the living to confuse their identity altogether; but he
had not yet succeeded in clearing up the doubt which had been thrown
into his mind. That question about Bice's parentage, "English on one
side," tormented him still. He had made again an attempt to discover the
truth, and he had been foiled. The probabilities seemed all in favour of
the solution which at the first word had presented itself to him; but
still there was a chance that it might not be so.
His mind had been full and troubled enough, when he returned to the
still house, and thought with compunction how many thoughts which he
could not share with her he was bringing back to Lucy's side. He could
not trust them to her, or confide in her, and secure her help, as in
many other circumstances he would have done without hesitation. But he
could not do that in this case,--not so much because she was his wife,
as because she was so young, so innocent, so unaware of the
complications of existence. How could she understand the temptations
that assail a young man in the heyday of life, to whom many indulgences
appear permissible or venial, which to her limited and innocent soul
would seem unpardonable sins? To live even for a few years with a
stainless nature like that of Lucy, in whom there was not even so much
knowledge as would make the approaches of vice comprehensible, is a new
kind of education to the most experienced of men. He had not believed it
to be possible to be so altogether ignorant of evil as he had found her;
and how could he explain to her and gain her indulgent consideration of
the circumstances which had led him into what in her vocabulary would be
branded with the name of vice? Sir Tom even now did not feel it to be
vice. It was unfortunate that it had so happened. He had been a fool. It
was almost inconceivable to him now how for the indulgence of a
momentary passion he could have placed himself in a position that might
one day be so embarrassing and disagreeable. He had not behaved ill at
the moment; it was the woman who had behaved ill. But how in the name of
wonder to explain all this to Lucy? Lucy, who was not conscious of any
reason why a man's code of morals should be different from that of a
woman! When Sir Tom returned to this painful and difficult subject, the
immediate question as to Lucy's strange conduct died from his mind. It
became more easy, by dint of repeating it, to believe that a mere
unreasonable panic about little Tom was the cause of her withdrawal. It
was foolish, but a loving and lovely foolishness which a man might do
more than forgive, which he might adore and smile at, as men love to do,
feeling that for a woman to be thus silly is desirable, a counterpoise
to the selfishness and want of feeling which are so common in the world.
But how to make this spotless creature understand that a man might slip
aside and yet not be a dissolute man, that he might be betrayed into
certain proceedings which would not perhaps bear the inspection of
severe judges, and yet be neither vicious nor heartless. This problem,
after he had considered it in every possible way, Sir Tom finally gave
up with a sort of despair. He must keep his secret within his own bosom.
He must contrive some means of doing what, in case his hypothesis was
right, would now be clearly a duty, without exciting any suspicion on
Lucy's part. That, he thought with a compunction, would be easy enough.
There was no one whom it would cost less trouble to deceive. With these
thoughts he went to sleep in the room which seemed strangely lonely
without her presence. Perhaps, however, it was not ungrateful to him to
be alone to think all those thoughts without the additional sense of
treachery which must have ensued had he thought them in her presence.
There was no treachery. He had been all along, he thought to himself, a
man somewhat sinned against in the matter. To be sure it was
wrong--according to all rules of morals, it was necessary to admit this;
but not more wrong, not so much wrong, as most other men had been. And,
granting the impropriety of that first step, he had nothing to reproach
himself with afterwards. In that respect he knew he had behaved both
liberally and honourably, though he had been deceived. But
how--how--good heavens!--explain this to Lucy? In the silence of her
room, where she was not, he actually laughed out to himself at the
thought; laughed with a sense of all impossibility beyond all laws or
power of reasoning. What miracle would make her understand? It would be
easier to move the solid earth than to make her understand.
But it was altogether a very strange night--such a night as never had
been passed in that house before; and fearful things were about in the
darkness, ill dreams, strange shadows of trouble. When Sir Tom woke in
the morning and found no sign that his wife had been in the room or any
trace of her, there arose once more a painful apprehension in his mind.
He hurried half-dressed to the nursery to ask for news of the child, but
was met by the nurse with the most cheerful countenance, with little Tom
holding by her skirts, in high spirits, and fun of babble and glee.
"He has had a good night, then?" the father said aloud, lifting the
little fellow to his shoulder.
"An excellent night, Sir Thomas," the woman said, "and not a bit tired
with his journey, and so pleased to see all the carriages and the folks
passing."
Sir Tom put the boy down with a cloud upon his face.
"What was the cause, then, of Lady Randolph's anxiety last night?"
"Anxiety, Sir Thomas! Oh no; her ladyship was quite pleased. She do
always say he is a regular little town-bird, and always better in
London. And so she said when I was putting of him to sleep. And he never
stirred, not from the moment he went off till six o'clock this morning,
the darling. I do think now, Sir Thomas, as we may hope he's taken hold
of his strength."
Sir Tom turned away with a blank countenance. What did it mean, then? He
went back to his dressing-room, and completed his toilette without
seeing anything of Lucy. The nurse seemed quite unconscious of her
mistress's vigil by the baby's side. Where, then, had Lucy passed the
night, and why taken refuge in that nursery? Sir Tom grew pale, and saw
his own countenance white and full of trouble, as if it had been a
stranger's, in the glass. He hurried downstairs to the breakfast-room,
into which the sun was shining. There could not have been a more
cheerful sight. Some of the flowers brought up from the Hall were on the
table; there was a merry little fire burning; the usual pile of
newspapers were arranged for him by Williams's care, who felt himself a
political character too, and understood the necessity of seeing what the
country was thinking. Jock stood at the window with a book, reading and
watching the changeful movements outside. But the chair at the head of
the table was vacant. "Have you seen Lucy?" he said to Jock, with an
anxiety which he could scarcely disguise. At this moment she came in,
very guilty, very pale, like a ghost. She gave him no greeting, save a
sort of attempt at a smile and warning look, calling his attention to
Williams, who had followed her into the room with that one special dish
which the butler always condescended to place on the table. Sir Tom sat
down to his newspapers confounded, not knowing what to think or to say.