"He has promised that he will not oppose," Lucy said; "but why do you speak so, and look so? Bice--has done no harm."

"Oh, no; Bice has done no harm," cried Lady Randolph bitterly; "nothing, except being born, which is harm enough, I think. But do you mean to tell me, Lucy, that Tom--a man of honour, notwithstanding all his vagaries--Tom----lets you do this and never says a word? Oh, it is too much. I have always stood by him. I have been his support when every one else failed. But this is too much, that he should put the burden upon you--that he should make _you_ responsible for this girl of his----"

"Aunt Randolph!" cried Lucy, rising up quickly and confronting the angry woman. She put up her hand with a serious dignity that was doubly impressive from her usual simpleness. "What is it you mean? This girl of his! I do not understand. She is not much more than a child. You cannot, cannot suppose that Bice--that it is she--that she is----" Here she suddenly covered her face with her hands. "Oh, you put things in my mind that I am ashamed to think of," Lucy cried.

"I mean," said Lady Randolph, who in the heat of this discussion had got beyond her own power of self-restraint, "what everybody but yourself must have seen long ago. That woman is a shameless woman, but even she would not have had the effrontery to bring any other girl to your house.

It was more shameless, I think, to bring that one than any other; but she would not think so. Oh, cannot you see it even now? Why, the likeness might have told you; that was enough. The girl is Tom's girl.

She is your husband's----"

Lucy uncovered her face, which was perfectly colourless, with eyes dilated and wide open. "What?" she whispered, looking intently into Lady Randolph's face.

"His own child--his--daughter--though I am bitterly ashamed to say it,"

the Dowager said.

For a moment everything seemed to waver and turn round in Lucy's eyes, as if the walls were making a circuit with her in giddy s.p.a.ce. Then she came to her feet with the sensation of a shock, and found herself standing erect, with the most amazing incomprehensible sense of relief.

Why should she have felt relieved by this communication which filled her companion with horror? A softer air seemed to breathe about Lucy, she felt solid ground under her feet. For the first moment there seemed nothing but ease and sweet soothing and refreshment in what she heard.

"His--daughter?" she said. Her mind went back with a sudden flash upon the past, gathering up instantaneously pieces of corroborative evidence, things which she had not noted at the moment, which she had forgotten, yet which came back nevertheless when they were needed: the Contessa's mysterious words about Bice's parentage, her intimation that Lucy would one day be glad to have befriended her: Sir Tom's sudden agitation when she had told him of Bice's English descent: finally, and most conclusive of all, touching Lucy with a most unreasonable conviction and bringing a rush of warm feeling to her heart, Baby's adoption of the girl and recommendation of her to his mother. Was it not the voice of nature, the voice of G.o.d? Lucy had no instinctive sense of recoil, no horror of the discovery. She did not realise the guilt involved, nor was she painfully struck, as some women might have been, by this evidence of her husband's previous life "If it is so," she said quietly, "there is more reason than ever, Aunt Randolph, that I should do everything I can for Bice. It never came into my mind before. I see now--various things: but I do not see why it should--make me unhappy," she added with a faint smile which brought the water to her eyes; "it must have been--long before I knew him. Will you tell me who was her mother? Was she a foreigner? Did she die long ago?"

"Oh, Lucy, Lucy," cried Lady Randolph, "is it possible you don't see?

Who would take all that trouble about her? Who would burden themselves with another woman's girl that was no concern of theirs? Who would--can't you see? can't you see?"

There came over Lucy's face a hot and feverish flush. She grew red to her hair, agitation and shame took possession of her; something seemed to throb and swell as if it would burst in her forehead. She could not speak. She could not look at her informant for shame of the revelation that had been made. All the bewildered sensations which for the moment had been stilled in her breast sprang up again with a feverish whirl and tumult. She tottered back to the chair on which she had been sitting and dropped down upon it, holding by it as if that were the only thing in the world secure and steadfast. It was only now that Lady Randolph seemed to awake to the risks and dangers of this bold step she had taken. She had roused the placid soul at last. To what strange agony, to what revenge might she have roused it? She had looked for tears and misery, and fleeting rage and mad jealousy. But Lucy's look of utter giddiness and overthrow alarmed her more than she could say.

"Lucy! Oh, my love, you must recollect, as you say, that it was all long before he knew you--that there was no injury to you!"

Lucy made a movement with her hand to bar further discussion, but she could not say anything. She pointed Lady Randolph to her chair, and made that mute prayer for silence, for no more. But in such a moment of excitement there is nothing that is more difficult to grant than this.

"Oh, Lucy," the Dowager cried, "forgive me! Perhaps I ought not to have said anything. Oh, my dear, if you will but think what a painful position it was for me. To see you so unsuspicious, ready to do anything, and even Tom taking advantage of you. It is not more than a week since I found it all out, and how could I keep silence? Think what a painful position it was for me."

Lucy made no reply. There seemed nothing but darkness round her. She put out her hand imploring that no more might be said; and though there was a great deal more said, she scarcely made out what it was. Her brain refused to take in any more. She suffered herself to be kissed and blessed, and said good-night to, almost mechanically. And when the elder lady at last went away, Lucy sat where Lady Randolph had left her, she did not know how long, gazing woefully at the ruins of that crumbled world which had all fallen to pieces about her. All was to pieces now.

What was she and what was the other? Why should she be here and not the other? Two, were there?--two with an equal claim upon him? Was everything false, even the law, even the external facts which made her Tom's wife. He had another wife and a child. He was two, he was not one true man; one for baby and her, another for Bice and the Contessa. When she heard her husband coming in Lucy fled upstairs like a hunted thing, and took refuge in the nursery where little Tom was sleeping. Even her bourgeoise horror of betraying herself, of letting the servants suspect that anything was wrong, had no effect upon her to-night.

CHAPTER XLI.

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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed away for long years were now coming back again to embarra.s.s 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 ident.i.ty 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sail 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sion he could have placed himself in a position that might one day be so embarra.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing."

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."