"No, Dodo, I have never got over it."
The moment after he had said it, he would have given his right hand to
have it unsaid. Dodo was silent for a moment, and Jack found himself
noticing the tiny, trivial things about him. He observed a fly trying
to alight oh his horse's ear, but the animal flicked it off with a
little jerk, before it got fairly settled. He wondered whether the fly
had illusions about that ear, and whether it imagined that it would be
happy for ever and ever, if it could once settle there.
"You know we are saying the most frightfully unconventional things
to each other," said Dodo. "I am very sorry for you, Jack, and I
will administer consolation. When I said 'No' to you, I did it with
real regret, with quite a different sort of feeling to that which I
should have had if I had said 'No' to Chesterford. It was quite an
unreasonable feeling, I couldn't define it, but I think it must have
been because----"
Then Jack recovered his self-respect in a moment, by one of those
strange contradictions in our nature, which urged him to stop his ears
to what, a week before, he had been almost tempting her to say.
"Ah, stop, stop," he said, "you don't know what you are saying. Dodo,
this won't do. Think of Chesterford."
"Chesterford and the baby," said Dodo softly. "I believe you are right,
Jack. This is unprofitable. But, Jack, since we renounce that, let us
still be friends. Don't let this have made any difference to us. Try
and realise that it is all an illusion."
Dodo half turned towards him, with a long glance in her brown eyes, and
a little smile playing about her mouth.
"Yes, yes," said Jack, laughing nervously. "I told Bertie so the other
day. I have been a madman for half an hour, but that is over. Shall we
turn?"
They wheeled their horses round, and cantered down the Row.
"Oh, this beautiful world," exclaimed Dodo. "You've no idea what it is
to me to come out of the house again, and ride, and dance and sing. I
really believe, Jack, that I enjoy things more than anyone else I know.
Everything that enjoys itself appeals to me. Jack, do enjoy yourself,
although we settled you mustn't appeal to me. Who is that girl standing
there with the poodle? I think I shall get Chesterford to buy me a
poodle. There's a woman next her awfully like Vivy, do you see, shading
her eyes with her hand. It is Vivy."
Dodo's face suddenly grew grave and frightened. She reined her horse in
opposite to where Mrs. Vivian was standing.
"Quick, quick," she said, "tell me what has happened!"
Mrs. Vivian looked up at Dodo with infinite compassion in her eyes.
"Dodo, darling," she said, "give your horse to the groom. Please help
her to dismount, Mr. Broxton."
Dodo got off, and Mrs. Vivian led her to a seat. Dodo had a sudden
flash of remembrance of how she had sat here with Jack a year ago.
"Tell me quickly," she said again.
"My poor Dodo," said Mrs. Vivian, softly stroking the back of Dodo's
hand. "You will be brave, won't you? It is worth while being brave. It
is all over. The baby died this morning, half an hour after you had
gone."
Dodo's first feeling was one of passionate anger and resentment. She
felt she had been duped and tricked in a most unjustifiable manner.
Fate had led her to expect some happy days, and she had been cruelly
disappointed. It was not fair; she had been released from two tedious
months of inactivity, only to be caught again. It was like a cat
playing with a mouse. She wanted to revenge herself on something.
"Oh, it is too awful," she said. "Vivy, what can I do? It is cruel."
Then her better nature came to her aid. "Poor Chesterford, poor dear
old boy," she said simply.
Mrs. Vivian's face grew more tender.
"I am glad you thought of him," she said. "His first thought was for
you. He was there all the time. As soon as it was over he said to
himself, 'Please, God, help Dodo to bear it.' You bear it very well,
dear. Come, the carriage is waiting."
"Oh, I can't, I can't," said Dodo passionately; "let me sit here a
little while, and then go away somewhere else. I can bear it better
alone. I can't see Chesterford."
"No, Dodo," she said, "you must not be cowardly. I know it is the worst
part of it for you. But your duty lies with him. You must comfort him.
You must make him feel that he has got you left. He is terribly broken,
but he will be brave for your sake. Be brave for his."
Dodo sighed wearily.
"I suppose you are right," she said; "I will come."
She turned and looked round on to the gay scene. The Row was full of
riders, and bright with the flooding sunlight.
"Oh, it is cruel," she said. "I only wanted to be happy, and I mayn't
even be that. What is the good of it all, if I mayn't enjoy it? Why
was the baby ever born? I wish it never had been. What good does it do
anyone that I should suffer?"
Mrs. Vivian felt horribly helpless and baffled. How could she appeal to
this woman, who looked at everything from only her own standpoint?
"Come, Dodo," she said.
They drove back in silence. Chesterford was standing in the hall as
they entered, waiting for them. He came forward to meet Dodo.
"My poor, poor darling," he said, "it is very hard on you. But we can
bear it together, Dodo."
Dodo turned from him passionately, and left him standing there.
Dodo was sitting in the window of her morning-room late on the same
afternoon. She and Lord Chesterford had been together to look at the
baby as it lay there, with the little features that had been racked and
distorted with pain, calm and set again, as if it only slept; and Dodo
had at that moment one real pang of grief. Her first impulse, as we
have seen, was one of anger and impatience at the stupidity of destiny.
She had been enjoying herself, in a purely animal way so intensely,
at that moment when she saw Mrs. Vivian waiting for her under the
trees. She was just released from a tedious period of inactivity, and
inactivity was to Dodo worse than anything in the Inferno.
"I daresay I should get accustomed to being roasted," she had said
once to Miss Grantham. "It really would be rather interesting seeing
your fingers curling up like fried bacon, but imagine being put in a
nicely-furnished room with nobody to talk to, and a view over Hyde
Park one side and Melton Mowbray the other, and never being able to
get out! The longer that lasted, the worse it would become." And so
she had felt the sort of rapture with which "the prisoner leaps to
loose his chains" when she had gone out that morning, and again knew
the infinite delight of feeling a fine horse answer to her hand, under
a sort of playful protest. Then this had come upon her, and Dodo felt
that language, failed her to express her profound contempt and dislike
for the destiny that shapes our ends.
But her generosity and sense of fair play had come to her aid. She was
not alone in this matter, and she quite realised that it was worse for
Chesterford than herself.
Chesterford had evinced the most intense interest in the baby in
itself. Dodo, on the other hand, had frankly declared that the baby's
potentialities possessed a far greater attraction, for her than its
actualities. But she had voluntarily linked her life with his; and
she must do her part--they had had a great loss, and he must not feel
that he bore it alone. Dodo shook her head hopelessly over the unknown
factor, that made her so much to him, and left him so little to her,
but she accepted it as inevitable. Almost immediately after she had
left him in the hall, she felt angry with herself for haying done so,
just as she had been vexed at her reception of his proposal of family
prayers, and a few minutes afterwards she sent for him, and they had
gone together to see the baby. And then, because she was a woman,
because she was human, because she was genuinely sorry for this honest
true man who knelt beside her and sobbed as if his heart was broken,
but with a natural instinct turned to her, and sorrowed more for her
than for himself, her intense self-centredness for the time vanished,
and with a true and womanly instinct she found her consolation in
consoling him.
Dodo felt as if she had lived years since this morning, and longed to
cut the next week out of her life, to lose it altogether. She wanted
to get away out of the whole course of events, to begin again without
any past. From a purely worldly point of view she was intensely vexed
at the baby's death; she had felt an immense pride in having provided
an heir, and it was all no use; it was over, it might as well never
have been born. And, as the day wore on, she felt an overwhelming
disgust of all the days that were to follow, the darkened house, the
quieted movements, the enforced idleness. If only no one knew, Dodo
felt that she would fling herself at once, this very minute, into the
outside world again. What was the use of all this retirement? It only
made a bad job worse. Surely, when misfortune comes on one, it is best
to forget it as soon as possible, and Dodo's eminently practical way
of forgetting anything was to absorb herself in something else. "What
a sensible man David was," she thought. "He went and oiled himself,
which, I suppose, is the equivalent of putting on one's very best
evening dress." She felt an inward laughter, more than half hysterical,
as to what would happen if she went and oiled Chesterford.
She got up and went languidly across to the window. Lord Chesterford's
room was on the story below, and was built on a wing by itself, and a
window looked out on her side of the house. Looking down she saw him
kneeling at his table, with his face buried in his hands. Dodo was
conscious of a lump rising in her throat, and she went back to her
chair, and sat down again.
"He is such a good, honest old boy," she thought, "and somehow,
in a dim-lit way, he finds consolation in that. It is a merciful
arrangement."
She walked downstairs to his study, and went in. He had heard her step,
and stood near the door waiting to receive her. Dodo felt infinitely
sorry for him. Chesterford drew her into a chair, and knelt down beside
her.
"You've no idea what a help you have been to me, darling," he said. "It
makes me feel as if I was an awful coward, when I see you so brave."
Dodo stroked his hand.
"Yes, yes," she said, "we must both be brave, we must help one another."
"Ah, my own wife," he said, "what should I have done if it had been
you? and I was dreadfully afraid at one time! You know you are both the
baby and yourself to me now, and yet I thought before you were all you
could be."
Dodo felt horribly uncomfortable. She had been aware before that there
had been moments when, as Jack expressed it, she was "keeping it up,"
but never to this extent.
"Tell me about it, Chesterford," she said.
"It was only half an hour after you went," he said, "that he suddenly
got worse. The doctor came a few minutes after that. It was all
practically over by then. It was convulsions, you know. He was quite
quiet, and seemed out of pain for a few minutes before the end, and he
opened his eyes, and put out his little arms towards me. Do you think
he knew me, Dodo?"
"Yes, dear, yes," said Dodo softly.
"I should be so happy to think he did," said Lord Chesterford. "Poor
little chap, he always took to me from the first, do you remember? I
hope he knew me then. Mrs. Vivian came very soon after, and she offered
to go for you, and met you in the Park, didn't she?"
"Yes," said Dodo; "Jack and I were together. She is very good to us.
Would you like to see her to-night?"
"Ah no, Dodo," he said, "I can't see anyone but your dear self. But
make her come and see you if you feel inclined, only come and talk to
me again afterwards."
"No, dear," said Dodo. "I won't have her, if you feel against it."
"Then we shall have an evening together again, Dodo," he said. "I seem
to have seen you so little, since you began to go about again," he
added wistfully.
"Oh, it must be so," said Dodo; "you have one thing to do, and I have
another. I've seen so many different people this last week, that I
feel as if I had seen no one person."
"You are so active," he said; "you do half a dozen things while I am
doing one."
"Oh, but you do great important man things," said Dodo, "and I do silly
little woman things."
She felt the conversation was becoming much more bearable.
Chesterford smiled. Dodo seized on it as a favourable omen.
"I like seeing you smile, old boy," she said; "you look more yourself
than you did two hours ago."
He looked at her earnestly.
"Dodo, you will not think me preaching or being priggish, will you,
darling? You know me too well for that. There is one way of turning
this into a blessing. We must try and see why this was sent us, and
if we cannot see why, we must take it in faith, and go on living our
lives simply and straightforwardly, and then, perhaps, we shall know
sometime. Ah, my darling, it has taught me one thing already, for I
never knew before how much I loved you. I loved you all I could before
this, but it has somehow given me fresh power to love. I think the love
I had for the boy has been added to the love I had for you, and it is
yours, darling, all of it, always."