Sir Tom

Bice looked round her bewildered from one to another.

"Should I be _de trop_?" she said, turning to Sir Tom with anxious eyes.

Sir Tom looked at her with an air of singular emotion. He laid his hand caressingly on her shoulder: "_De trop_? no; never in my house. But that is not the question. Lucy will be cheered when she knows that you wanted to come. But what the Contessa says is true; there are plenty of nurses--and my wife--has me, if I am any good; and we would not have you run any risk----"

"In her position!" cried the Contessa; "_fiancee_ only to-day. She owes herself already to Lord Montjoie, who would never consent, never; it is against every rule. Speak to her, _mon ami_, speak to her; she is a girl who is capable of all. Tell her that now it is thought criminal, that one does not risk one"s self and others. She might bring it here, if not to herself, to me, Montjoie, the domestics." The Contessa sank into a chair and began fanning herself; then got up again and went towards the girl clasping her hands. "My sweetest," she cried, "you will not be _entetee_, and risk everything. We shall have news, good news, every morning, three, four times a day."

"And Milady," said Bice, "who has done everything, will be alone and in tr-rouble. Sir Tom, he must leave her, he must attend to his affairs. He is a man; he must take the air; he must go out in the world. And she--she will be alone: when we have lived with her, when she has been more good, more good than any one could deserve. Risk! The doctor does not take it, who is everywhere, who will, perhaps, come to you next, Madama; and the nurses do not take it. It is a shame," cried the girl, throwing up her fine head, "if Love is not as good as the servants, if to have grat.i.tude in your heart is nothing! And the risk, what is it? An illness, a fever. I have had a fever----"

"Bice, you might bring--what is dreadful to think of," cried the Contessa, with a shiver. "You might die."

"Die!" the girl cried, in a voice like a silver trumpet with a keen sweetness of scorn and tenderness combined. "_Apres_?" she said, throwing back her head. She was not capable of those questions which Mr.

Derwent.w.a.ter and his pupil had set before her. But here she was upon different ground.

"Oh, she is capable of all! she is a girl that is capable of all," cried the Contessa, sinking once more into a chair.

CHAPTER L.

THE EVE OF SORROW.

Sir Tom stepped out into the night some time after, holding Jock by the arm. The boy had a sort of thrill and tremble in him as if he had been reading poetry or witnessing some great tragic scene, which the elder man partially understood without being at all aware that Jock had himself been an actor in this drama. He himself had been dismissed out of it, so to speak. His mind was relieved, and yet he was not so satisfied as he expected to be. It had been proved to him that he had no responsibility for Bice, and his anxiety relieved on that subject; relieved, oh yes: and yet was he a little disappointed too. It would have been endless embarra.s.sment, and Lucy would not have liked it. Still he had been accustoming himself to the idea, and, now that it was broken clean off, he was not so much pleased as he had expected. Poor little Bice! her little burst of generous grat.i.tude and affection had gone to his heart. If that little thing who (it appeared) had died in Florence so many years ago had survived and grown a woman, as an hour ago he had believed her to have done, that is how he should have liked her to feel and to express herself. Such a sense of approval and admiration was in him that he felt the disappointment the more. Yes, he supposed it was a disappointment. He had begun to get used to the idea, and he had always liked the girl; but of course it was a relief--the greatest relief--to have no explanation to make to Lucy, instead of the painful one which perhaps she would only partially believe. He had felt that it would be most difficult to make her understand that, though this was so, he had not been in any plot, and had not known of it any more than she did when Bice was brought to his house. This would have been the difficult point in the matter, and now, heaven be praised! all that was over, and there was no mystery, nothing to explain. But so strange is human sentiment that the world felt quite impoverished to Sir Tom, though he was much relieved. Life became for the moment a more commonplace affair altogether. He was free from the annoyance. It mattered nothing to him now who she married--the best _parti_ in society, or Jock"s tutor, or anybody the girl pleased. If it had not been for that exhibition of feeling Sir Tom would probably have said to himself, satirically, that there could be little doubt which the Contessa"s ward and pupil would choose. But after that little scene he came out very much shaken, touched to the heart, thinking that perhaps life would have been more full and sweet had his apprehensions been true. She had been overcome by the united pressure of himself and the Contessa, and for the moment subdued, though the fire in her eye and swelling of her young bosom seemed to say that the victory was very incomplete. He would have liked the little one that died to have looked like that, and felt like that, had she lived to grow a woman like Bice. Great heaven, the little one that died! The words as they went through his mind sent a chill to Sir Tom"s breast. Might it be that they would be said again--once more--and that far-back sin bring thus a punishment all the more bitter for being so long delayed. Human nature will never get to believe that G.o.d is not lying in wait somewhere to exact payment of every account.

"She understands that," said Jock suddenly. "She don"t know the meaning of other things."

"What may be the other things?" said Sir Tom, feeling a half jealousy of anything that could be said to Bice"s disadvantage. "I don"t think she is wanting in understanding. Ah, I see. You don"t know how any one could resist the influence of MTutor, Jock."

Through the darkness under the feeble lamp Jock shot a glance at his elder of that immeasurable contempt which youth feels for the absence of all penetration shown by its seniors, and their limited powers of observation. But he said nothing. Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.

"Don"t think I"m a scoffer, my boy," said Sir Tom. "MTutor"s a very decent fellow. Let us go and look him up. He would be better, to my thinking, if he were not quite so fine, you know. But that"s a trifle, and I"m an old fogey. You are not going back to Park Lane to-night."

"After what you heard her say? Do you think I"ve got no heart either? If I could have it instead of him!"

"But you can"t, my boy," Sir Tom said with a pressure of Jock"s arm.

"And you must not make Lucy more wretched by hanging about. There"s the mystery," he broke out suddenly. "You can"t--none of us can. What might be nothing to you or me may be death to that little thing, but it is he that has to go through with it; life is a horrible sort of pleasure, Jock."

"Is it a pleasure?" the boy said under his breath. Life in him at that moment was one big heavy throbbing through all his being, full of mysterious powers unknown, of which Death was the least--yet, coming as he did a great shadow upon the feeblest, a terrible and awe-striking power beyond the strength of man to understand.

After this night, so full of emotion, there came certain days which pa.s.sed without sign or mark in the dim great house looking out upon all the lively sights and sounds of the great park. The sun rose and reddened the windows, the noon blazed, the gray twilight touched everything into colour. In the chamber which was the centre of all interest no one knew or cared how the hours went, and whether it was morning or noon or night. Instead of these common ways of reckoning, they counted by the hours when the doctor came, when the child must have his medicine, when it was time to refresh the little cot with cool clean linen, or sponge the little hot hands. The other attendants took their turns and rested, but Lucy was capable of no rest. She dozed sometimes with her eyes half opened, hearing every movement and little cry.

Perhaps as the time went on and the watch continued her faculties were a little blunted by this, so that she was scarcely full awake at any time, since she never slept. She moved mechanically about, and was conscious of nothing but a dazed and confused misery, without antic.i.p.ation or recollection. Something there was in her mind besides, which perhaps made it worse; she could not tell. Could anything make it worse? The heart, like any other vessel, can hold but what it is capable of, and no more.

It is not easy to estimate what is the greatest sorrow of human life.

It is that which has us in its grip, whatever it may be. Bereavement is terrible until there comes to you a pang more bitter from living than from dying: and one grief is supreme until another tops it, and the sea comes on and on in mountain waves. But perhaps of all the endurances of nature there is none which the general consent would agree upon as the greatest, like that of a mother watching death approach, with noiseless, awful step, to the bed of her only child. If humanity can approach more near the infinite in capacity of suffering, it is hard to know how. We must all bow down before this extremity of anguish, humbly begging the pardon of that sufferer, that in our lesser griefs, we dare to bemoan ourselves in her presence. And whether it is the dear companion--man or woman grown--or the infant out of her clasping arms, would seem to matter very little. According as it happens, so is the blow the most terrible. To Lucy, enveloped by that woe, there could have been no change that would not have lightened something (or so she felt) of her intolerable burden. Could he have breathed his fever and pain into words, could he have told what ailed him, could he have said to her only one little phrase of love, to be laid up in her heart! But the pitiful looks of those baby eyes, now bright with fever, now dull as dead violets, the little inarticulate murmurings, the appeals that could not be comprehended, added such a misery as was almost too much for flesh and blood to bear. This terrible ordeal was what Lucy had to go through.

The child, though he had, as the maids said, no const.i.tution, and though he had been enfeebled by illness for half his little lifetime, fought on hour after hour and day after day. Sometimes there was a look in his little face as of a conscious intelligence fighting a brave battle for life. His young mother beside him rose and fell with his breath, lived only in him, knew nothing but the vicissitudes of the sick room, taking her momentary broken rest when he slept, only to start up when, with a louder breath, a little cry, the struggle was resumed. The nurses could not, it would be unreasonable to expect it, be as entirely absorbed in their charge as was his mother. They got to talk at last, not minding her presence, quite freely in half whispers about other "cases," of patients and circ.u.mstances they had known. Stories of children who had died, and of some who had been miraculously raised from the brink of the grave, and of families swept away and houses desolated, seemed to get into the air of the room and float about Lucy, catching her confused ear, which was always on the watch for other sounds. Three or four times a day Sir Tom came to the door for news, but was not admitted, as the doctor"s orders were stringent. There was no one admitted except the doctor; no cheer or comfort from without came into the sick room. Sir Tom did his best to speak a cheerful word, and would fain have persuaded Lucy to come out into the corridor, or to breathe the fresh air from a balcony. But Lucy, had she been capable of leaving the child, had a dim recollection in her mind that there was something, she could not tell what, interposing between her and her husband, and turned away from him with a sinking at her heart. She remembered vaguely that he had something else--some other possessions to comfort him--not this child alone as she had. He had something that he could perhaps love as well--but she had nothing; and she turned away from him with an instinctive sense of the difference, feeling it to be a wrong to her boy. But for this they might have comforted each other, and consulted each other over the fever and its symptoms. And she might have stolen a few moments from her child"s bed and thrown herself on her husband"s bosom and been consoled. But after all what did it matter? Could anything have made it more easy to bear? When sorrow and pain occupy the whole being, what room is there for consolation, what importance in the lessening by an infinitesimal shred of sorrow!

This had gone on for--Lucy could not tell how many days (though not in reality for very many), when there came one afternoon in which everything seemed to draw towards the close. It is the time when the heart fails most easily and the tide of being runs most low. The light was beginning to wane in those dim rooms, though a great golden sunset was being enacted in purple and flame on the other side of the house.

The child"s eyes were dull and glazed; they seemed to turn inward with that awful blank which is like the soul"s withdrawal; its little powers seemed all exhausted. The little moan, the struggle, had fallen into quiet. The little lips were parched and dry. Those pathetic looks that seemed to plead for help and understanding came no more. The baby was too much worn out for such painful indications of life. The women had drawn aside, all their talk hushed, only a faint whisper now and then of directions from the most experienced of the two to the subordinates aiding the solemn watch. Lucy sat by the side of the little bed on the floor, sometimes raising herself on her knees to see better. She had fallen into the chill and apathy of despair.

At this time a door opened, not loudly or with any breach of the decorum of such a crisis, but with a distinct soft sound, which denoted some one not bound by the habits of a sick room. A step equally distinct, though soft, not the noiseless step of a watcher, came in through the outer room and to the bed. The women, who were standing a little apart, gave a low, involuntary cry. It looked like health and youthful vigour embodied which came sweeping into the dim room to the bedside of the dying child. It was Bice, who had asked no leave, who fell on her knees beside Lucy and stooped down her beautiful head, and kissed the hand which lay on the baby"s coverlet. "Oh, pardon me," she said, "I could not keep away any longer. They kept me by force, or I would have come long, long since. I have come to stay, that you may have some rest, for I can nurse him--oh, with all my heart!"

She had said all this hurriedly in a breath before she looked at the child. Now she turned her head to the little bed. Her countenance underwent a sudden change. The colour forsook her cheeks, her lips dropped apart. She turned round to the nurse with a low cry, with a terrified question in her eyes.

"You see," said Lucy, speaking with a gasp as if in answer to some previous argument, "she thinks so, too----" Then there was a terrible pause. There seemed to come another "change," as the women said, over the little face, out of which life ebbed at every breath. Lucy started to her feet; she seized Bice"s arm and raised her, which would have been impossible in a less terrible crisis. "Go," she said; "Go, Bice, to your father, and tell him to come, for my boy is dying Go--go!"

CHAPTER LI.

THE LAST CRISIS.

"Go to your father." Bice did not know what Lucy meant. The words bewildered her beyond description, but she did not hesitate what to do.

She went downstairs to Sir Tom, who sat with his door opened and his heart sinking in his bosom waiting to hear. There was no need for any words. He followed her at once, almost as softly and as noiselessly as she had come. And when they entered the dim room, where by this time there was scarcely light enough for unaccustomed eyes to see, he went up to Lucy and put his arms round her as she stood leaning on the little bed. "My love," he said, "my love; we must be all in all to each other now." His voice was choked and broken, but it did not reach Lucy"s heart. She put him away from her with an almost imperceptible movement.

"You have others," she said hoa.r.s.ely; "I have nothing, nothing but him."

Just then the child stirred faintly in his bed, and first extending her arms to put them all away from her, Lucy bent over him and lifted him to her bosom. The nurse made a step forward to interfere, but then stepped back again wringing her hands. The mother had risen into a sort of sublimity, irresponsible in her great woe--if she had killed him to forestall her agony a little, as is the instinct of desperation, they could not have interfered. She sat down, and gathered the child close, close in her embrace, his head upon her breast, holding him as if to communicate life to him with the contact of hers. Her breath, her arms, her whole being enveloped the little dying creature with a fulness of pa.s.sionate existence expanded to its highest. It was like taking back the half-extinguished germ into the very bosom and core of life. They stood round her with an awe of her, which would permit no intrusion either of word or act. Even the experienced nurse who believed that the little spark of life would be shaken out by this movement, only wrung her hands and said nothing. The rest were but as spectators, gathering round to see the tragedy accomplished and the woman"s heart shattered before their eyes.

Which was unjust too--for the husband who stood behind was as great a sufferer. He was struck in everything a man can feel most, the instincts of paternal love awakened late, the pride a man has in his heir, all were crushed in him by a blow that seemed to wring his very heart out of his breast; but neither did any one think of him, nor did he think of himself. The mother that bare him!--that mysterious tie that goes beyond and before all, was acknowledged by them all without a word. It was hers to do as she pleased. The moments are long at such a time. They seemed to stand still on that strange scene. The light remained the same; the darkness seemed arrested, perhaps because it had come on too early on account of clouds overhead; perhaps because time was standing still to witness the easy parting of a soul not yet accustomed to this earth; the far more terrible rending of the woman"s heart.

Presently a sensation of great calm fell, no one could tell how, into the room. The terror seemed to leave the hearts of the watchers. Was it the angel who had arrived and shed a soothing from his very presence though he had come to accomplish the end?

Another little change, almost imperceptible, Lucy beginning to rock her child softly, as if lulling him to sleep. No one moved, or even breathed, it seemed, for how long? some minutes, half a lifetime. Then another sound. Oh, G.o.d in heaven! had she gone distracted, the innocent creature, the young mother, in her anguish? She began to sing--a few low notes, a little lullaby, in a voice ineffable, indescribable, not like any mortal voice. One of the women burst out into a wail--it was the child"s nurse--and tried to take him from the mother"s arms. The other took her by the shoulders and turned her away. "What does it matter, a few minutes more or less; she"ll come to herself soon enough, poor dear," said the attendant with a sob. Thus the group was diminished. Sir Tom stood with one hand on his wife"s chair, his face covered with the other, and in his heart the bitterness of death; Bice had dropped down on her knees by the side of that pathetic group; and in the midst sat the mother bent over, almost enfolding the child, cradling him in her own life. Bice was herself not much more than a child; to her all things were possible--miracles, restorations from the dead. Her eyes were full of tears, but there was a smile upon her quivering mouth. It was at her Lucy looked, with eyes full of something like that "awful rose of dawn"

of which the poet speaks. They were dilated to twice their natural size.

She made a slight movement, opening to Bice the little face upon her bosom, bidding her look as at a breathless secret to be kept from all else. Was it a reflection or a faint glow of warmth upon the little worn cheek? The eyes were no longer open, showing the white, but closed, with the eyelashes shadowing against the cheek. There came into Lucy"s eyes a sort of warning look to keep the secret, and the wonderful spectacle was, as it were, closed again, hidden with her arms and bending head.

And the soft coo of the lullaby went on.

Presently the women stole back, awed and silenced, but full of a reviving thrill of curiosity. The elder one, who was from the hospital and prepared for everything, drew nearer, and regarded with a scientific, but not unsympathetic eye, the mother and the child. She withdrew a little the shawl in which the infant was wrapped, and put her too-experienced, instructed hands upon his little limbs, without taking any notice of Lucy, who remained pa.s.sive through this examination. "He"s beautiful and warm," said the woman, in a wondering tone. Then Bice rose to her feet with a quick sudden movement, and went to Sir Tom and drew his hand from his face. "He is not dying, he is sleeping," she said.

"And I think, miss, you"re right. He has taken a turn for the better,"

said the experienced woman from the hospital. "Don"t move, my lady, don"t move; we"ll prop you with cushions--we"ll pull him through still, please G.o.d," the nurse said, with a few genuine tears.

When the doctor came some time after, instead of watching the child"s last moments, he had only to confirm their certainty of this favourable change, and give his sanction to it; and the cloud that had seemed to hang over it all day lifted from the house. The servants began to move about again and bustle. The lamps were lighted. The household resumed their occupations, and Williams himself in token of sympathy carried up Mr. Randolph"s beef-tea. When Lucy, after a long interval, was liberated from her confined att.i.tude and the child restored to his bed, the improvement was so evident that she allowed herself to be persuaded to lie down and rest. "Milady," said Bice, "I am not good for anything, but I love him. I will not interfere, but neither will I ever take away my eyes from him till you are again here." There was no use in this, but it was something to the young mother. She lay down and slept, for the first time since the illness began; slept not in broken, painful dozings, but a real sleep. She was not in a condition to think; but there was a vague feeling in her mind that here was some one, not as others were, to whom little Tom was something more than to the rest.

Consciously she ought to have shrunk from Bice"s presence; unconsciously it soothed her and warmed her heart.

Sir Tom went back to his room, shaken as with a long illness, but feeling that the world had begun again, and life was once more liveable.

He sat down and thought over every incident, and thanked G.o.d with such tears as men too, like women, are often fain to indulge in, though they do it chiefly in private. Then, as the effect of this great crisis began to go off a little, and the common round to come back, there recurred to his mind Lucy"s strange speech, "You have others----" What others was he supposed to have? She had drawn herself away from him. She had made no appeal to his sympathy. "You have--others. I have nothing but him." What did Lucy mean? And then he remembered how little intercourse there had been of late between them, how she had kept aloof from him. They might have been separated and living in different houses for all the union there had been between them. "You have others----" What did Lucy mean?

He got up, moved by the uneasiness of this question, and began to pace about the floor. He had no others; never had a man been more devoted to his own house. She had not been exacting, nor he uxorious. He had lived a man"s life in the world, and had not neglected his duties for his wife; but he reminded himself, with a sort of indignant satisfaction, that he had found Lucy far more interesting than he expected, and that her fresh curiosity, her interest in everything, and the just enough of receptive intelligence, which is more agreeable than cleverness, had made her the most pleasant companion he had ever known. It was not an exercise of self-denial, of virtue on his part, as the Dowager and indeed many other of his friends had attempted to make out, but a real pleasure in her society. He had liked to talk to her, to tell her his own past history (selections from it), to like, yet laugh at her simple comments. He never despised anything she said, though he had laughed at some of it with a genial and placid amus.e.m.e.nt. And that little beggar!

about whom Sir Tom could not even think to-day without a rush of water to his eyes--could any man have considered the little fellow more, or been more proud of him or fond? He could not live in the nursery, it was true, like Lucy, but short of that--"Others." What could she mean? There were no others. He was content to live and die, if but they might be spared to him, with her and the boy. A sort of chill doubt that somebody might have breathed into her ear that suggestion about Bice"s parentage did indeed cross his mind; but ever since he had ascertained that this fear was a delusion, it had seemed to him the most ridiculous idea in the world. It had not seemed so before; it had appeared probable enough, nay, with many coincidences in its favour. And he had even been conscious of something like disappointment to find that it was not true.

But now it seemed to him too absurd for credence; and what creature in the world, except himself, could have known the circ.u.mstances that made it possible? No one but Williams, and Williams was true.

It was not till next morning that the ordinary habits of the household could be said to be in any measure resumed. On that day Bice came down to breakfast with Sir Tom with a smiling brightness which cheered his solitary heart. She had gone back out of all her finery to the simple black frock, which she told him had been the easiest thing to carry.

This was in answer to his question, "How had she come? Had the Contessa sent her?" Bice clapped her hands with pleasure, and recounted how she had run away.

"The news were always bad, more bad; and Milady all alone. At length the time came when I could bear it no longer. I love him, my little Tom; and Milady has always been kind, so kind, more kind than any one. n.o.body has been kind to me like her, and also you, Sir Tom; and baby that was my darling," the girl said.

"G.o.d bless you, my dear," said Sir Tom; "but," he added, "you should not have done it. You should have remembered the infection."