‘I expect you would rather tell Lady Roxerby yourself,’ the doctor said.
Nicholas appeared stunned, but at these words he roused himself with a flash of fury.
‘Tell her myself? Certainly not. You must do it.… That is … if you are quite sure you are right. But isn’t it possible that you are mistaken?’
The doctors thought it was impossible.
Alethea received the verdict more calmly than her husband had done; but then she would not allow herself to believe that it was irrevocable. A dwarf? The very word meant nothing to her. She could not realize it. Hans might not be tall like his father, but with care and good nourishment, he need only be a small man. What would that matter?
But when she saw Nicholas, she realized that for him it mattered terribly. He seemed utterly broken. She had not known the value which he appeared to put upon physical stature, and now she found that nothing could have hurt him more. He felt it as much as if he had been told that his child was an idiot. He sat silent, his head buried in his hands, refusing to look up, refusing to speak, refusing to hear what she said. It seemed to her that in one moment he had begun to hate his child.
Unhappy as she was, Alethea’s unhappiness was not like this. In the first place, she could not believe the worst, and even if she had believed it, she could not picture to herself what it meant. But even if the worst were true, her response to it was a far greater feeling of tenderness for the little boy. More than ever he would need her love, her care, and her protection; and Alethea, who always answered quickly to a call on her pity, was ready to lavish all these upon her child.
Now she saw that Nicholas was far more pitiful than Hans and yet she could not help him. She came up against that miserable pride of his, forcing him to reject her sympathy as if it were a blow, even though he knew all the time that she was suffering too. His misery was fierce, like the misery of that trapped cat long ago; and it was just as helpless, just as antagonistic. He would not speak of Hans, or allow her to mention his name; so that after the first despairing day there stood between them a cruel bar of silence on the subject which was always in both their minds. Yet it prevented their speaking naturally of anything else. Alethea spent hours in the nursery, and Nicholas never entered the room. When they met for meals, he never spoke of where she had been or asked for news of the child. He looked at her resentfully, as though he defied her to break the silence he commanded on the one subject in her mind.
When they gardened together, everything seemed sham, as if each were affecting an interest for the sake of the other. Nicholas often went alone to the farm, while Alethea was with the child, and when she asked him how things were going, she felt that he hated her questions, and suspected her of asking them merely to ‘take his mind off’ the other subject. It seemed a hopeless impasse, for though Nicholas wouldn’t speak of the child, he appeared to be angry with her if she ever spoke of anything else. And he, who had always been so tender towards her, now seemed not to care that she too was unhappy.
But there were times when she forgot her misery, and strange to say, these were only when she was in the nursery with the baby. Then love won. Hans was the most winning of babies, with his tiny body, and his curiously mature expression. As the months went on Alethea found that he was the only person in the house who ever smiled at her, and who could always call from her an answering smile. They played together like any other mother and child. All her happiness, and her only gleams of gaiety, came from the baby.
For Nicholas grew no better. A cloud of smouldering rancour had descended upon him, and it seemed to grow thicker. His unhappiness tore at her heart, but he would not let her try to comfort him. She knew that his only chance of seeing the thing more normally would be to come to the nursery and play with the child as she did. Then he might have realized that the baby’s existence was not only a curse, but she dared not suggest this, and Nicholas was obstinate in avoiding the little boy.
One day, when they were walking in the Park, they passed the carpenter’s cottage and saw the crippled child lying in the garden. Nicholas had never seen him before.
He stopped abruptly. His face darkening.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘You know about him,’ Alethea answered. ‘He is Mrs Warren’s crippled boy.’
‘Crippled? That’s no cripple. He is a dwarf.’
She was terrified at the sound in his voice.
Hs turned upon her.
‘Alethea, what have you done? What have you done? I shall never forgive you.’
Alethea held on to the paling. She was almost falling to the ground.
‘What … what do you mean?’
‘You know. Yes, you know. It is your fault. You must have known it all along.’
His look of hatred scorched her.
‘No Nicholas, don’t say so. It can’t be,’ she said faintly.
There was no answer. She looked up, and saw that he had turned away, and was striding up the path to the cottage. His face was completely transformed with rage. What could he be going to do?
He knocked loudly upon the door, which was opened immediately by Warren. The man drew back when he saw the expression upon his master’s face.
‘You are discharged from to-day,’ said Nicholas. ‘ Come to the house this evening and you will receive a month’s pay, but you leave this cottage to-morrow!’
‘Sir Nicholas, what have I done?’
‘You have been employed by me, and you are required no longer. Our contract is terminated, and you need ask no questions. I have treated you fairly.’ He walked away, passing Alethea as if he did not see that she
was still standing where he had left her.
Mrs. Warren ran into the garden.
‘Please speak for us my lady,’ she said. ‘ We can’t get out of here
to-morrow. Where can we go?’
Alethea burst into tears.
‘I will see what I can do,’ she said, feeling terribly ashamed of
herself; and she followed Nicholas back to the house.
Chapter Nine
NICHOLAS did not come in to tea, and Alethea did not see him till dinner time, when the servants were in the room. They endured one of their now usual uncomfortable meals, ‘ keeping up appearances’ by an occasional remark upon some uninteresting subject, or talking to the dogs. All the time Alethea was thinking that as soon as they were alone she must try to persuade Nicholas to give the Warrens a little more time. She dreaded the idea of opening the subject, and yet it seemed dishonourable not to do so, after her promise to Mrs. Warren.
She spoke as the door shut behind the butler, feeling that if she waited, her courage would go.
‘Nicholas you don’t really mean, do you, that the Warrens must leave to-morrow?’
‘As you know, I generally mean what I say.’
‘But they can’t find another house in a day, and what can they do with their furniture?’
‘Warren is engaged by the week, and legally he can be discharged with a week’s notice. I am being generous to him. I am paying him for a full month, and on the strength of that he can quite well find lodgings for himself and his family till he gets another place.’
‘He may not get one, if people hear he has been sent off at a moment’s notice. It sounds as if he had been dishonest.’
‘Anyone wishing to engage him can ask me for his character.’
‘People may not even trouble to ask about him, if they hear we have sent him off like this.’
‘If they want to employ him they will ask.’
‘Please give them a little time, at any rate, till you want the cottage for another man. You need not see them.’
‘I shall not see them. They will go to-morrow.’
She knew that it was hopeless, but she made one more appeal—an appeal to which he would have listened a year ago.
‘I feel so unhappy about it,’ she said; ‘ as if their going was my fault.’
‘You have more than that on your conscience,’ was h
is answer, and his cruelty stung her into anger.
‘You have no right to say that,’ she said. ‘ How can you tell? There may be quite another cause.’
He jumped up.
‘What do you mean?’ he roared.
‘I mean that you can’t possibly tell that my having gone to see that little boy has anything at all to do with Hans being as he is. I can’t believe that it could make any difference. There must be a more fundamental cause.’
‘Fundamental? I don’t understand you.’
‘Perhaps some far-off inherited weakness. One knows so little about these things. Nicholas, you are cruelly unfair. You have always acted as if it was the fault of poor little Hans, and now you do the same to these unhappy Warrens. It is neither just nor generous.’
‘I am perfectly just, and I have no wish to be generous.’
‘Nicholas darling, do be generous—to me, to Hans, to the Warrens. It’s because you don’t try to be, that we are all so miserable. Don’t let us search back into the whys and the wherefores of this thing: we shall never find them out. All we know is that our child must have a sad life, and that we, at any rate, can give him love and a happy childhood. Don’t search miserably into the past, trying to find someone to blame for what is the fault of no individual. Let us look forward and try to make something of the future, for ourselves, and also for our little boy.’
‘Don’t be sentimental,’ was all that Nicholas said in reply, as he turned away and left the room. His words sounded like a curse.
She did not see him again that evening, and the Warrens left the next day.
The months went by, and the strain grew less. Nicholas and Alethea took up their lives again, though the old happiness had gone. In the early days of their married life they enjoyed talking of the future, but now they never spoke of it. It only meant for them the thought of their deformed child. Not that Hans was actually deformed. He was indeed perfectly proportioned; but even before he was a year old, he was touchingly unlike other children, and of course, the contrast must become far greater when he was a man.
Still, the Roxerbys found a mode of living, as sufferers must always find. Like the invalid, who moves miserably about the bed till he reaches a position in which he can lie with the least discomfort, so they got through their days, keeping out of sight, as well as they could, the unhappiness which lurked in the recesses of their lives. Nicholas never spoke of his son, and never saw him. Alethea spent every possible moment with the child, for it was only thus that her life was bearable. She longed for Nicholas to know the child, his pretty merry ways, the sweetness of his temper, the winning charm of his welcoming smile. But she dared not suggest this to her husband. She even concealed from him the hours that she herself spent in the nursery, for she had grown to dread the look of sombre pain which came into his face at the thought of Hans.
So they snatched at an uncertain happiness by sharing the surface of their lives, each trying to cheat the other into forgetfulness of what neither of them ever forgot. Then, too, there was Portia to play with, and she was now able to run about and talk. If the truth were told, she was rather a disagreeable cantankerous child, but at any rate she was not a dwarf.
One afternoon in early spring, Alethea took Hans in his perambulator for a walk in the Park, and as she came back to the house, she was surprised to see a strange motor at the door. The butler was not in the hall to be questioned as to the arrival, and Alethea carried Hans to the nursery, and went to the library. When she approached the door she was startled by hearing her husband’s voice speaking in what sounded to her to be tones of immense excitement. At first, she could hardly believe that it was really Nicholas who was speaking, but she knew that something momentous must be happening. She quickened her steps and opened the door to find an amazing and inexplicable sight.
Nicholas was standing in the middle of the room, and Alethea’s first impression was that he had grown several inches in height. He seemed to have become a giant; and his face, usually still and rather heavy, was transformed by fury. He was towering over a hideous little woman of about four feet in height. She stood looking up at him with her head thrown back defiantly, her arms akimbo, and her feet planted very far apart. Straight thin wisps of harsh black hair hung about her forehead in the wild burlesque of a fringe. Her face was yellowish in colour, but the large prominent teeth were so far more yellow that, beside them, the thick skin was almost sallow. The woman had a wide face with prominent cheekbones, and in it there blazed a pair of very remarkable, very black eyes. This astounding figure was clothed in a strange medley of colours. The dress of reddish purple was worn with a short jacket of dark green, and the yellow hat was surrounded by a blue ostrich feather. Short as the visitor was, her dress was even shorter, and in defiance of the fashion of the day, she displayed the greater part of her thick legs, as well as her feet, on which she wore a pair of strong useful boots.
Alethea stood spellbound, holding on to the handle of the door, and uncertain as to whether she had better come into the room or not.
Her entrance stopped the conversation, and Nicholas and the dwarf both turned to look at her.
There was an uneasy pause and then Nicholas said:
‘Mrs. Roxerby.’
Alethea thought he must indeed be mad, as this had never been her title.
She came forward, not knowing whether or not she was expected to shake hands.
‘You don’t seem over-pleased to see me,’ said the woman. ‘I am Nicholas’s mother.’
His mother! It was utterly impossible. Alethea looked at Nicholas to get his denial of this maniac’s words.
He said nothing. He was looking at her, and now she knew the trap which had always gripped him, and from which he had looked upon the world with that haughty hatred.
She knew that the woman was speaking the truth; and as she took Mrs. Roxerby’s hand, she heard her own voice trying to sound normal.
‘I didn’t know you were Nicholas’s mother. Of course I am glad to see you.’
‘Don’t trouble to lie about it,’ said Nicholas. ‘You are not glad, and I have already told my mother that I am not.’
Mrs. Roxerby turned upon him with an expression of exultant spite.
‘Go on!’ she said hoarsely. ‘Let me have it! I suppose you hadn’t told your wife that your mother was a dwarf.’
Alethea could see how this shaft went home, and she could not bear to know how much Nicholas was hurt by it.
‘Nicholas and I tell each other everything,’ she said very calmly.
The woman was evidently thwarted.
‘Then you know he’s ashamed of me,’ she retaliated. ‘Calls himself a Roxerby, and thinks he is a cut above people like me.’
‘Hold your bloody tongue, you little bitch,’ Nicholas broke in, and in spite of herself, Alethea could not help recoiling before this unknown violent man. He was a stranger to her.
‘Mind what you’re at,’ sneered the dwarf. ‘Don’t curse and swear before her ladyship. She don’t like it. You are forgetting that you aren’t at home.’
‘Mind your own business, you blasted deformity and get out of this house. Brokeyates is now my home and here I am master. You have no right here.’
‘Well, if the place did come from your father’s people, you’re none the less beholden to me in it. You live here on my money; and you got your son and heir through being my son. The dwarf’s blood comes from our side of the family.’
The venom in her voice was inhuman; and she looked triumphantly round, revelling in the effect of her words; for Alethea had been unable to restrain a little gasping sob; while Nicholas leapt towards his mother, his fists clenched, his face crimson.
She looked up at him as he stood over her with murder in his eye. She even laughed at him. She had no fear.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Hit a man your own size. Oh, you English gentleman!’
‘I wouldn’t touch you with the end of a bargepole,’ said Nicholas, letting his hands
fall to his side. ‘But it is a lie that I live here on your money. It is my own. I am a partner in the business as much as you are.’
‘A fat lot of good you are as a partner,’ she scoffed, with a discordant laugh. ‘I only put you in for the sake of appearances. Every penny was made by my father and by me. You Roxerbys have never been any good. You owe all you’ve got to me—your money, and your dwarf son.’
Again she saw that this gibe was more than he could bear.
‘Get out of this, you damned dwarf, and take your vile money with you. Listen to me. From this moment I disown you and all that is yours. I will never touch another penny that comes from Australia. Get back there with it, and take with you the miserable brat which I owe to your unholy blood. Yes. It’s true. Yours is the dwarf’s blood and you seem proud of it. You can take the dwarf away with you. I never want to see him or you again. Out of this house, and take the boy with you. Alethea, do you hear? This woman has got to go, and she shall take the child. It’s true she says: he’s more hers than ours. Let her have him, and a good riddance.’
‘Nicholas, I can’t,’ said Alethea. ‘You don’t know what you are saying.’
‘I know well enough. Do as I tell you. Go and fetch the child. She can have him now.’
‘I won’t let him go,’ said Alethea.
‘Give him to me,’ said the dwarf. She enjoyed the sight of Alethea’s anguished face, and she saw that her son was so beside himself with fury that he never observed it. Mrs. Roxerby knew Nicholas well enough to realize that he would act quickly, carried away by the violent temper which was one of her legacies to him; and that afterwards he would be in despair at knowing what he had done to his wife.
‘Go and tell nurse to get him ready,’ Nicholas was saying to Alethea. ‘ Mrs. Roxerby cannot wait, and the boy must go with her.’
Alethea went out of the room. She seemed to be living in a wild dream in which the events raced at headlong speed. Desperately she tried to keep some control of them. She looked at the clock in the hall. It was nearly four o’clock, and the London train left in half an hour. Could she catch it? She ran to the nursery, and hastily threw Hans’ clothes on to him again, and then she carried him down a side staircase and into the stable yard. On her way, she snatched up her purse and her cheque-book.
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