With the morning the wind ceased, and a dull grey day set in, accompanied by heavy rain. The nurse awoke, and, yawning wearily, re-lit the fire which had gone out, — a servant came with breakfast for both nurse and patient. This servant was a girl of about seventeen or thereabouts, with a broad good-humoured face and lively manners.
“Well, how’s the baby?” she asked.
“As right as babies usually are at such a time of life,” responded the nurse crossly—” The Jess they’re wanted, the more they thrive.”
“And how’s she?” went on the servant, nodding towards the bed.
“Doing nicely. Is Mr. Elverton downstairs yet?”
“No.”
“Well, you tell him his baby’s a girl, and that I’ll bring it to him as soon as I’ve had my breakfast.”
“Ah! you’ll find him very queer;” — and the maid shook her head mysteriously. “He went on something awful last night!”
“Last night isn’t this morning,” said the nurse sententiously. “Muddlehead or no muddlehead, he’s got to see his baby whether he likes it or not. Otherwise he’d be quite capable of saying it’s some one else’s.”
And she smiled knowingly. The smile was reflected curiously on the young servant’s face as she withdrew.
“Now, ma’am, — now, Missis Elverton,” proceeded the nurse, approaching the bedside, “ Here’s your tea. Lord’s sake! if you haven’t been crying! You ought to know better than that. You’ll get the fever if you don’t learn to control yourself.”
“What does that matter!” — and Mrs. Elverton moved restlessly. “I wish with all my heart I could die, and there would be an end of it. Oh, nurse! Do you think he will ever know? Do you think he will guess?”
The nurse, whose name was Collins, busied herself in cutting a slice of toast into strips before replying. Then she looked up with a dull sarcasm expressed in her hard eyes.
“Men are blind as bats when they’re sober,” she said. “And when they’re drunk they’re blinder still. I don’t suppose you’ve any cause for alarm, if you keep quiet. But you’re not a very clever woman, if you’ll excuse the liberty I take in saying so, — I’ve known a many cleverer. And if the child should grow at all like its father, of course unpleasant things might be said—”
Mrs. Elverton pushed away her untasted tea, with a gesture of irritation.
“He can prove nothing,” she murmured. “There are no letters, — nobody can say anything except” — here her wild eyes turned appealingly on her attendant—” except, — you!”
Nurse Collins smiled coldly.
“I shall say nothing, you may be sure, ma’am,” she replied. “It’s none of my business. I know too many ladies’ secrets to mind another being added to the list. Besides, I get all my income out of knowing how to hold my tongue. Don’t you think you’d better look at the child?”
“No!” said Mrs. Elverton vehemently— “I tell you I hate it! I feel that it will be my curse!” The nurse looked slightly contemptuous at this outburst, and, without replying, turned to the discussion of her own breakfast. After she had made a thoroughly substantial meal, and not before, she moved leisurely over to the baby’s crib and sat down beside it, studying intently the features of the helpless little creature within. Its eyes were fully open, and regarded her with such a weird pathos, that, as she said to herself, it “worried her.” In fact, after a little time she could not refrain from uttering her thoughts aloud.
“Upon my word, Missis Elverton,” she said, with an involuntary low laugh as she spoke—” There’s one thing quite positive about this child — it’s got its father’s eyes!”
Mrs. Elverton with an effort raised herself in bed, uttering a frightened exclamation.
“Its father’s eyes!” she echoed, and her thin hands clutched the coverlet nervously.
“The very images of them!” went on Nurse Collins, evidently gloating over her discovery. ‘“They’re rather remarkable eyes you know, ma’am; you don’t often see their like in a man’s head. Very blue, and with black centres — for all the world like cornflowers, — and here this blessed baby has them as plain as plain can be!”
With a sort of shuddering half-sob, Mrs. Elverton sank back and covered her face, as though she strove to hide herself from the very light of day. The nurse noticed her action with more disdain than compassion.
“What cowards these fine ladies are to be sure!” she considered. “With a drunken brute for a husband, I would tell any number of lies without turning a hair, or fretting my conscience about it either. Come here, you poor little mite, —
I must do my duty by you as far as I can.”
And lifting the infant in her arms, she wrapped a thick white shawl about it many times, and prepared to leave the room.
“Where are you going, nurse?” Mrs. Elverton asked, in faint alarmed accents.
“Downstairs, ma’am. It’s best to take the bull by the horns at once. I’m sure Mr. Elverton will want to see his baby!” — and she laughed somewhat derisively. “You trust me, ma’am, — I’ll manage. Try and drink your tea while I’m gone.”
She closed the door of the room noiselessly behind her, and began to descend a broad, thickly-carpeted stair. The rain beat against the hall windows with a pattering, dreary noise, and the SOUL of the child, passively looking out on all that surrounded it, became again conscious of pain and discomfiture. Again it asked itself the reason of its strange imprisonment, its bound and tortured state. Why, in this hollow of space and time into which it had unwittingly flown like a stray moth at nightfall, was there so little light and liberty, so much close darkness and bitter thrall? No solution was as yet vouchsafed of the intricate and agonising mystery!
And now the nurse, carefully hushing her frail charge, crossed the threshold of a large and well-furnished apartment, where the blaze from a bright fire cast a cheerful glow over a table that glittered with silver and china and all the appurtenances of wealth amounting to extravagance. Here, in a deep armchair, with his slippered feet on the fender, and his bloated figure wrapped in a costly fur-lined dressing-gown, sat a repulsive-looking man of about forty-five or fifty, reading the morning’s newspaper.
“Who’s that?” he shouted impatiently, springing to his feet as the nurse entered. She curtsied respectfully.
“It’s Nurse Collins, if you please, sir,” she said in meek accents, curtseying again with a fawning leer on her dull commonplace features. “You’ll be glad to hear, sir, that your dear lady’s doing very well indeed; and here is the sweet baby, sir — a fine little girl—”
He stopped her with a fierce gesture and still fiercer oath. His coarse face, swollen with excess of drink, grew purple with fury, — his eyes, protruding from his head, shone luridly with the glare of madness and wickedness. Trembling from head to foot, he advanced a step or two, dashing the newspaper behind him.
“Damn you!” he said—” And damn the woman upstairs too! How dare you bring that brat to me? Take it out of my sight! Smother it, — drown it! — go to hell with it! What are you standing there for?” — and he almost foamed at the mouth in the extremity of his delirious rage. “Go, if you want to keep a whole skin! And take that cursed bastard with you!”
The face of the nurse turned a sickly white; but she still made an effort to hold her ground.
“Lord, Mr. Elverton, sir! Won’t you even look at the poor little dear? And begging your pardon, sir, it’s the very image of yourself, sir, say what you like, — and I’m sure you don’t know your own mind, sir, this morning, if I may make so bold, — and the poor baby hasn’t done you no harm—”
He made a wild bound towards her with raised arm and clenched fist.
“Go to the devil!” he yelled. “Must I speak twice?” — and he panted heavily for breath. “By God, I’ll break every bone in your body if you stay here another instant!”
Thoroughly startled now, the nurse fell back from the murderous-looking figure that threatened her, and made a slinking
and frightened exit, endeavouring, as she went, to soothe and quiet the infant, for it had broken out into a desolate and helpless wailing, and its tiny face was wet with tears. A speechless misery was expressed in its wide-open eyes; — the misery of the captive SOUL within. Memory and woeful consciousness were pouring rapidly in upon that ethereal Intelligence, — it knew, it felt the frightful hopelessness of wilful sin born and bred in the children of humanity, — it realised with sudden horror that this world was but an outer phase of some deeper and more inextricable form of banishment from its Creator, — and with all the fervour of its immortal strength it silently protested, prayed and strove to rend its narrow prison. But in vain; for its time was not yet.
Half-way up the stairs, the nurse met a housemaid coming down.
“Well?” said the girl tentatively.
“He’s a beast!” returned the nurse emphatically. “He’s as drunk this morning as he was last night.”
“Why, of course!” — and the maid looked surprised that any one should imagine that her master could ever be otherwise than in a drunken condition. “When they’re took that way it lasts them a long time. I’ve been here six weeks and I’ve never seen him really sober. It’s what the doctors call delirum treemens. I’d leave him to it if I were her.” And she jerked her head in the direction of her mistress’s bedroom.
“Ah! But if you had no money of your own, what would you do?” inquired Nurse Collins scornfully. “You wouldn’t care to beg your bread in the streets I daresay! She hasn’t got a penny to bless herself with; how can she leave him?”
“She could get a divorce, couldn’t she?” suggested the housemaid.
“Could she?” — and the nurse smiled a covert smile. “Well, I don’t know about that. Divorce is a nasty business; no end of disagreeable questions are asked which are not always convenient to answer.”
And she went on her way murmuring “Sh, — sh!” to the still wailing baby. She found Mrs. Elverton fast asleep, so she set about ministering to the poor infant’s wants as well as she could, being a woman of rough manners and rougher touch. But the tiny mortal gave her no trouble. It ceased crying directly it was brought into its mother’s room, and now lay on her lap passively, without moving its large blue eyes from the weirdly contemplative study of her face. Even when she put it back in its crib it still gazed at her in the same patient, wondering, pained way, much as a trapped animal might look at its captor.
“I never in all my life saw such a child!” she grumbled to herself in some perplexity—” Staring away for all the world as if it knew all about itself and its parents too! It doesn’t sleep half enough” either; it’s an unnatural sort of baby somehow. Perhaps it’s just as well Mr. Elverton didn’t see those big eyes; drunk as he is from morning to night, he might have—”
“Nurse!” Mrs. Elverton had awakened suddenly with a nervous start, and was trying to lift herself up in bed—” Did you take the child to him?”
“Yes, I did, ma’am.”
“What did he say?”
Nurse Collins hesitated a moment.
“Well, he’s very bad this morning; I don’t think he quite knows what he says, so it isn’t any use telling you—”
“Ah!” Mrs. Elverton closed her eyes and heaved a deep sigh—” I can guess.”
“He wouldn’t look at it,” went on the nurse. “But I shouldn’t worry about that if I were in your place.”
“Worry!” echoed Mrs. Elverton, opening her eyes that were suddenly ablaze with scorn; “Worry about him? I never give him a moment’s thought if I can help it. He has made my life a perfect misery to me ever since we were married. Do you know what he did when my first child was born, — his own child?” — and she emphasised these words with a dreadful intensity of meaning—” He came into my room, deliriously drunk, dragged the baby out of bed and flung it on the ground naked. There it lay for an hour, while he stamped about, raving and swearing. He had locked the door so that no one should come in, and I was afraid to ring my bell and give the alarm lest he should kill me. When at last he went away and the servants came, I was almost mad with terror; and the child, happily for itself, died three days afterwards. And you tell me not to ‘worry’ for such a brute as that!”
Nurse Collins had taken a chair by the bedside and was busied with some sewing.
“Well, ma’am, you’ve a deal to suffer and that’s a fact,” she said—” But you’re not the only one by a long way. The drink is a curse to many gentlemen as well as to the ‘poorer classes’ about which the newspapers are always a-talking. And if so be it’s true as I’ve heard say, that you married Mr. Elverton for his money, there’s what you’ve got for it. It often happens to ladies who are on the look-out for wealth and a good position, that they get men like that, and men, too, who don’t and won’t give them any money to spend either. I often think myself that the old-fashioned way of marrying for love was best. Folks might have hard times, and no doubt they had, and they might have to work hard too, which is a healthy thing in itself, — but I daresay they led happier lives and kept themselves a deal honester and cleaner.”
Mrs. Elverton’s face flushed; and turning her head away she said no more.
All day the rain was incessant. Towards three o’clock in the afternoon there was a crunching of quick wheels on the roughly kept carriage-drive of the ‘Folly,’ and Nurse Collins, looking out of the window, saw Mr. Elverton getting into his dogcart, evidently bent on a journey. His groom put in a small portmanteau and several wraps, and then assisted his master (who was decidedly unsteady on his legs) to mount the seat. The light vehicle was drawn by a spirited mare who at the first touch of the whip started down the drive at a brisk canter which was almost a gallop; the groom swung himself up behind, — the iron gates opened, and in two or three minutes the whole equipage had disappeared among the mists of drifting rain. Finding her patient dozing, the nurse slipped out of the room, and leaning over the upper banisters called softly to a servant whom she heard moving to and fro below.
“Where has the master gone?”
“Into the town to dine and sleep,” replied the girl, looking up at her. “Isn’t it a mercy! We shall have a quiet night of it for once. Peters, the groom, has gone with him.”
Nurse Collins returned to her post, and as soon as the invalid awoke, told her of her husband’s sudden departure. A great relief and joy brightened Mrs. Elverton’s face, and gave it back all its own original beauty, — rousing herself, she sat up in bed, and readily partook of some nourishing broth which her attendant prepared for her; and then, with her own hands, she undid and re-twisted her beautiful hair, asking for a mirror, that she might see for herself how many flaws her sufferings had made in the delicate perfection of her charms.
“Oh, what ugly lines!” she said playfully, marking with her small forefinger the hollows of pain beneath her eyes—” But they will go away soon, won’t they, nurse? They will not stay there as if I were old, — I am only six-and-twenty. My eyes are wonderfully bright, aren’t they? You don’t think it is fever, do you? Oh, no! They were always bright; — and I really think — yes, I really do think the lashes have grown longer since I was ill. I like long lashes; I know some women who would give anything in the world to have them as long as mine.”
She laughed with conscious vanity, — then she ran one hand through her hair and raised it slightly on one side so that the gold colour rippled and shone like a stray gleam of sunlight where it waved back from the brow. Surveying herself with meditative admiration for some minutes, she sighed as she laid down the mirror.
“Now, — you may bring me the child,” she said suddenly.
The nurse obeyed, and placed the little creature in her arms. As she met the upward look of its solemn, sad blue eyes, she trembled through and through; the pitiful, beseeching, wistful gaze had something in it that appalled and shamed her. She had nothing of the spiritual in her nature, — she could not know or dream that it was an angelic Being that so reproachfully regard
ed her, — a bright thing strayed from Heaven, and yearning to return thither. For now the SOUL was fully conscious of its exile and its grief, — it realised that every day of its imprisonment in its earthly habitation would but add to its abasement and despair. Undesired, unloved, and bitterly lonely its existence would be, — sin and fraud and shame accompanying it in all the different phases of its life-experience. And no tenderness was now expressed in the infant’s clear orbs of vision as they reflected the unloving mother’s face, — only distrust and pain.
Mrs. Elverton surveyed it, noting every small feature of the tiny visage with cold unsympathetic intentness.
“What a pity it was ever born!” she said. “Born dead it would not have mattered, — but a living child, and a girl, too! — what chance will it ever have in such a world as this! It is a most unfortunate affair; — a more unwished-for baby never breathed!”
Knitting her brows in a vexed frown, she signed to the nurse to take it away, and, when it was replaced in its crib, lay back on her pillows, not in sleep but in thought.
Slowly the afternoon wore on, and once more the night descended. The storm had now entirely ceased, though a light wind still blew in from the sea-coast, moaning softly at the cracks of the windows and doors, as though in penitence for its past fury. Stars came dimly out in the faintly clouded heavens, and the waves could be heard on the distant beach, coming in with a long solemn organ-roll of sound, very different to the wild crashing and upheaving they had made among the rocks a few hours before. Between eight and nine o’clock a tall man, wrapped close in a dark-hooded ulster, arrived at ‘Elverton’s Folly,’ and, with a few words uttered in a low tone, and a couple of sovereigns slipped into the hand of the servant who opened the door, was instantly admitted. Once inside the hall, he asked to see Nurse Collins. Summoned, she came immediately, and held up her hands in amazement as she recognised her visitor.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 920
