She did nothing. Baby lay on the floor sucking his little claw-like fingers, and stirring feebly in the sun. Mrs. Nevill Tyson continued to gaze abstractedly at nothing. When Swinny came back after a judicious interval, he was still lying there, and she still sitting as before. She had not moved an inch. How did Swinny know that? Why, the tail of Mrs.
Tyson"s dress was touching the exact spot on the carpet it had touched before. (Swinny had made a note of the pattern.) And the child might have cried himself into fits before she"d have stirred hand or foot to comfort him. Baby found himself caught up in a rapture and strained to his faithful Swinny"s breast. Whereupon he cried. He had been happier lying in the sun.
Swinny turned round to the motionless figure by the hearth, and held the child well up in her arms.
"Baby thinks that his mamma would like to see him," said Swinny, in an insinuating manner.
A hard melancholy voice answered, "I don"t want to see him. I don"t want to see him any more."
All the same Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned and looked after him as he was carried through the doorway. She could just see the downy back of his innocent head, and his ridiculous frock bulging roundly over the nurse"s arm. But whether she was thinking of him at that moment G.o.d only knows.
The household was informed that its master would not return that evening after all; that no date was fixed for his coming.
Later on Pinker, the guardian of the hearth, finding those fragments of letters tried to put them together again. Tyson"s letter it was impossible to restore. It had been torn to atoms in a vicious fury of destruction. But by great good luck Stanistreet"s (a mere note) had been more tenderly dealt with. It was torn in four neat pieces; the text, though corrupt, was fairly legible, and left little to the ingenuity of the scholiast. The Captain was staying in the neighborhood. He proposed to call on Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Would she be at home on Wednesday afternoon? Now, to Pinker"s certain knowledge, Mrs. Nevill Tyson had taken the letters to the post herself that morning. That meant secrecy, and secrecy meant mischief.
How was she going to get through the next two days? This was provided for. Baby was a bad sleeper. That night he cried as he had never cried before. Not violently; he was too weak for that, but with a sound like the tongue-tied whimper of some tiny animal. Swinny had slept through worse noise many a night. Now he cried from midnight to c.o.c.k-crow; and on Tuesday morning Swinny was crying too. He had had one of his "little attacks," after which he began to show signs of rapid wasting.
He had got something which Mrs. Nevill Tyson had never heard of--"marasmus," the doctor called it. She hoped it was nothing very bad.
Then the truth came out piecemeal, through Swinny"s confession and the witness of her fellow-servants. The wretched woman"s movements had been wholly determined by the movements of Pinker; and she had been in the habit of leaving the child in the servants" hall, where the cook, being an affectionate motherly woman, made much of him, and fed him with strange food. He had had an "attack" the last time she did this, and Swinny, who valued her place for more reasons than one, had been afraid to say anything about it. Preoccupied with her great pa.s.sion, she had been insensible to the signs of sickness that showed themselves from day to day. In other words, there had been shameful, pitiful neglect.
Terrified and repentant, Swinny confessed, and became faithful again. She sat up all night with the child wrapped in blankets in her lap. She left nothing for his mother to do but to sit and look at him, or go softly to and fro, warming blankets. (It was odd, but Mrs. Nevill Tyson never questioned the woman"s right to exclusive possession of the child.) She had written to Nevill by the first post to tell him of his son"s illness. That gave him time to answer the same night.
Wednesday came. There was no answer to her letter; and the baby was worse. The doctor doubted if he would pull through.
Mrs. Wilc.o.x was asked to break the news to her daughter. She literally broke it. That is to say, she presented it in such disjointed fragments that it would have puzzled a wiser head than Mrs. Nevill Tyson"s to make out the truth. Mrs. Wilc.o.x had been much distressed by Molly"s strange indifference to her maternal claims; but when you came to think of it, it was a very good thing that she had not cared more for the child, if she was not to keep him. All the same, Mrs. Wilc.o.x knew that she had an extremely disagreeable task to perform.
They were in the porch at Thorneytoft, the bare white porch that stared out over the fields, and down the great granite road to London. As Mrs.
Nevill Tyson listened she leaned against the wall, with her hands clasped in front or her and her head thrown back to stop her tears from falling.
Her throat shook. She was so young--only a child herself! A broad shaft of sunshine covered her small figure; her red dress glowed in the living light. Looking at her, a pathetic idea came to Mrs. Wilc.o.x. "You never had a frock that became you more," she murmured between two sighs. Mrs.
Nevill Tyson heard neither murmur nor sighs. And yet her senses did their work. For years afterwards she remembered that some one was standing there in the bright sunshine, dressed in a red gown, some one who answered when she was spoken to; but that she--she--stood apart in her misery and was dumb.
"I don"t understand," she said at last. "Why can"t you say what you mean?
_Is_ there danger?"
Mrs. Wilc.o.x looked uncomfortable. "Yes, there is _some_ danger. But while there is life there is--hope."
"If there is danger--" she paused, looking away toward the long highroad, "if there _is_ danger, I shall send for Nevill. He will come."
She telegraphed: "Baby dangerously ill. Come at once."
She waited feverishly for an answer. There was none. To the horror of the household, she gave orders that when Captain Stanistreet called she would see him. As she could not tear herself from the baby, there was nothing for it but to bring Stanistreet to her.
To his intense astonishment Louis was led up into a wide bare room on the third story: He was in that mood when we are struck with the unconscious symbolism of things. By the high fire-guard, the walls covered with cheerful oleographs, the toys piled in the corner, he knew that this was the abode of innocence, a child"s nursery. The place was flooded with sunshine. A woman sat by the fire with a small yellowish bundle in her lap. Opposite her sat Mrs. Nevill Tyson, with her eyes fixed on the bundle. She looked up in Stanistreet"s face as he came in, but held out no hand.
"Louis," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely when he was near, "where"s Nevill?"
"In London."
"Have you seen him?"
"Yes."
"Is he coming?"
"I don"t know. I didn"t speak to him. I--I was in a hurry."
She had turned her head. Her eyes never wandered from that small yellowish bundle. Up to the last she had let it lie on the nurse"s knee.
She had not dared to take it; perhaps she felt she was unworthy. He followed her gaze.
"He"s very ill," said she. "Look at him."
The nurse moved a fold of blanket from the child"s face, and Stanistreet gazed at Tyson"s son. He tried to speak.
"Sh--sh--" whispered Mrs. Nevill Tyson. "He"s sleeping."
"Dying, sir," muttered the nurse. The woman drew in her knees, tightening her hold on the child. Her face was stained with tears. (She had loved the baby before she loved Pinker. Remorse moved her and righteous indignation.) Mrs. Nevill Tyson"s nostrils twitched; deep black rings were round her eyes. Pa.s.sion and hunger were in them, but there were no tears.
And as Stanistreet looked from one woman to the other, he understood. He picked up the bundle and removed it to its mother"s knee. All her soul pa.s.sed into the look wherewith she thanked him. Swinny, tear-stained but inexorable, stood aloof, like rigid Justice, weighing her mistress in the balance.
"He"s dying, Molly," he said gently.
She shook her head. "No; he"s not dying. G.o.d isn"t cruel. He won"t let him die."
She turned the child"s face to her breast, hoping perhaps that his hands would move in the old delicious way.
He did not stir, and she laid him on his back again and looked at him.
His lips and the hollows under his eyes were blue. The collapse had come.
Louis knelt down and put his hand over the tiny heart.
A spasm pa.s.sed over the baby"s face, simulating a smile. Then Mrs. Nevill Tyson fell to smiling too.
"See"--she said.
But Stanistreet had seen enough. He rose from his knees and left her.
CHAPTER X
CIRc.u.mSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
Well, if she wouldn"t look at him when he was alive, she might show some feeling now he"s dead. (So Justice.)
She showed no feeling. That is to say, none perceptible to the eyes of Justice.
On Thursday morning she heard from Tyson. A short note: "I am more sorry than words can say. I wish I could be with you, but I"m kept in this infernal place till the beginning of next week. I hope the little man will pull through. Take care of yourself," and the usual formula.