"My eyes seem failing lately," she said aloud, as if in the empty room there had been still a listener, with whom she must keep up the decencies of old hypocrisy. "They ache when I sew." And she drew her hand across them furtively.
Then she rose and pulled her stiff, white curtain aside, very carefully, not to spoil its starched perfection, and looked out at the children. They came running down the lane; some passed her window without looking up; others glanced over her, where she sat forlorn and old, much as she, in her time long ago had often glanced over Spotty.
She shrank away, as Spotty used to shrink when any one crossed the yard, and drew the curtain forward again. But she peeped between its frilled edge and the shutter to see the children. Strange children all, with cold, unfriendly eyes; but some of them had satin cheeks and wind-kissed freckles here and there; and all of them had nimble feet and voices full of laughter; and one (but she turned her head away when that one passed) had thick and tawny curls that caught the sunlight where some other woman's hand had brushed them back and tied them with a ribbon.
***
"Johnny dangerously ill. Diphtheria.
Crying for you."
Jack repeated the words to himself over and over again. The wheels of the train hammered them out; the rattle of the windows, the breathing of his sleepy fellow-passengers, the heavy thumping of the thing that ached somewhere inside his chest or somewhere in the top of his head (he was not quite sure which) all worried and pursued him with their senseless iteration. Sometimes the refrain would break off for a moment and let him hear another one that was going on more softly underneath it, scarcely audible, but always going on: "You'll come too late; you'll come too late; you'll come too late."
Surely that must be St. Albans, that blur of brown streets in the shadowy landscape as the train rushed past He would soon be home now. But it was a long time since Molly's telegram had called him from his breakfast in Edinburgh and sent him tearing to the station for the first train back to London. Any thing might have happened since then. If only he had not gone to the medical Congress! If only...
He raised the window blind and looked out. It was growing dark already, but it grows dark so early in winter... Patches of snow gleamed faintly here and there in the level pasture land.
Somehow he had never realised till to-day what the child was to him. Indeed, he had never had much time for thinking about his personal affections; there were always so many things to do, what with the hospital and the microscope work, and chance jobs of coaching students for examinations, to make both ends meet. One couldn't afford to neglect opportunities for earning a few odd pounds here and there, with three mouths to feed and Johnny's education to save up for. And when he did get free, he was tired, or worried about patients, or rushing across the Continent in express trains in response to wild telegrams from Theo...
Poor Theo! The periodical tragedies with his duchesses and countesses had a trick of coming at such inconvenient times; and they were so real to him, while they lasted. Only a year ago he had tried to asphyxiate himself with charcoal fumes, together with the misunderstood and beautiful young wife of some bald-headed ambassador. The farewell telegram had come when Jack was down with influenza, and he had dragged himself up out of bed and caught the mail for Brussels. (It was considerate of nature, by the way, to have made him as strong as a horse.) He had arrived just in time to open the windows, and to keep the scandal out of the papers, and administer first restoratives and then consolation and fatherly advice to the two grown-up children. They had probably forgotten each other's existence by now.
"You'll come too late. You'll come too late..."
It was a bit hard that it should be diphtheria, the very disease that he had toiled and laboured over, that had been the centre of his secret hopes for the last three years. He was nearly convinced now that he was on the track of a discovery; but what use are discoveries if they cannot save the child you love? What use is any thing if it comes too late?
He lowered the blind again and leaned back in his corner with closed eyes. He had been tired when he left Edinburgh; and now his head throbbed like a steam-thresher. He must keep still for a few minutes and not listen to the burden of the wheels.
Ah, the staircase... and the door that creaked when his uncle pushed it open... and the room with the sloping ceiling... the two rafters... He started and opened his eyes. He had slipped back somehow to childhood, to the vicarage at Porthcarrick, to the room of horrors. It was some years now since he had last been troubled by that particular nightmare, the same which had haunted him after Helen died. He brushed one hand across his forehead; it was quite wet.
This was absurd; a man who has things to do can't afford to go in for nerves and fits of the horrors, as if he were Theo. If only the child would live...
"Tickets, please!"
As the door jerked open he sat up straight and realised dimly that he had been bargaining in his sleep with some unknown god; promising to forget Porthcarrick, to wipe out the image of the gable room, if the child might but live.
***
His sister met him under the disinfectant sheet on the landing of the stairs. Her face wore a strangely passive look, as if she had been suddenly awakened, as if her eyes were still heavy with sleep.
"Molly," he said, and paused; then again, in a whisper: "Molly..?"
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
"You're too late."
They went into the room. It had already been put in order; a shaded lamp burned beside the cot where Johnny lay like a big wax doll, his yellow hair spread round him. A bunch of snowdrops had been placed in his right hand. Jack knelt down and stayed a long time motionless and silent. At last he uncovered his face and kissed the rigid baby hands. As he rose, the sleeve of his coat brushed against the lamp-shade and tilted it back. A band of yellow light fell across the cot and lit up the profile of the little corpse. It was like Helen's.
Jack stood quite still beside the cot. The minutes dragged by heavily, and he stood looking. Something seemed to have dried up in him, and withered. One made so many mistakes in life, and when one found them out they mattered very little; indeed, nothing in the world mattered much.
Something moved on the other side of the cot. It was Molly; and as he looked up their eyes met. She put out her hands as if he had struck her.
"Ah, don't look so hard! He wanted to tell you; it was not his fault, it was mine!"
"It was mine," he answered wearily, and turned away. "I might have seen."
He crossed the room and leaned upon the mantle-piece, looking down into the fireless grate. Molly came up to him.
"I couldn't tell you, dear; it might have made you hate him. He has no one else in the world that will love him faithfully, only you and me; and me he has forgotten. If you were to desert him..."
She broke off. Jack had not moved, and his face was still hard. She slipped her arm about his neck, as Helen used to do.
"Remember, he is not quite a human being. It is not fair to blame him if he hurts us; he can't understand responsibilities, any more than an angel might, or a sky-lark. It's not his fault that he has genius. And if I bore a child to him, he bore one to me; his first symphony. Anyhow, if there ever was any thing to forgive, I forgave it long ago. Some one must pay for the music."
He shook his head with a hopeless gesture.
"You don't understand. It wasn't of you I was thinking. You can't be quite forsaken while I live; and at the worst you're a grown woman and can defend yourself, as far as any creature can, in a world like this. But if you and I had happened to die, — there are so many chances in life; and the child had lived, and fallen into uncle's hands... I wonder, did he never think of that?"
She drew his head down against her cheek.
"Dear, that is morbid and unjust; it's not like you, you are always so just. There was never much danger for Johnny; surely either you or I could always have managed to save him from that, if only with a little c
hloroform. And anyway the fates have been merciful; whatever they may do to us, they have at least spared the child. Jack, you have no right to be bitter against him, the child has suffered no wrong. He has hurt no one but me, and I have not complained."
"Don't be afraid," he answered, sighing. "It will make no difference; nothing will ever make any difference. He's her son and he has a right to me. I must just bear it."
A knock at the street-door roused him.
"That sounds like a telegram. From Edinburgh, perhaps; I was to have shown some sections to-night. For me, Susan? No, there's no answer."
There was a little hush after he shut the door.
"Is it from Edinburgh?" Molly asked, looking round. Jack was standing by the table, the telegram still in his hand. As he turned his head to answer, the look on his face cut her to the heart. Something faint and bitter, scarcely a smile, flickered for an instant round the bearded mouth.
"No," he said. "Something wrong with one of the duchesses, I suppose."
He handed her the telegram. It was dated from Paris.
"A dreadful misfortune has happened. Come to me. — Theo."
She laid the paper down in silence and went back to her place by the dead child.
Jack passed a hand across his eyes. A dim reflection of his childish misery flitted before him, and vanished; a half-forgotten image of a bird flying away from an open cage. He went back to the cot.
"Molly, how much money have we in the house?"
"Three sovereigns and a little silver."
He looked at his watch.
"I'd better take the gold and write you a cheque to go on with. Where's the carbolic, dear? Ask Susan to call a hansom while I get disinfected; I've only just time to catch the boat-train; it starts at nine from Charing Cross."
He stood a moment silent, looking down; then stooped, and drew the sheet over Johnny's head.
THE END
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Jack Raymond Page 16