Chapter Twenty-two

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ALTHOUGH Belchamber had become a very different place from the home of his childhood, it was still a relief to Sainty to get into the country. It must be confessed that the parties with which Cissy delighted to fill the house were extraordinarily unexacting in the attention they demanded from their host, so that he was able, as in London, to lead very much his own life, undisturbed by his wife or her guests. Except at dinner, or in occasional passage meetings, as he slunk from the library to his own sacred quarters in the western pavilion, he seldom met any of them.

Moreover, the young couple were, for the moment, nearly alone. Most of the society which Lady Belchamber specially affected was either at Cowes and Goodwood, or devoting a fortnight to the care of its property and the reception of its schoolboys before the annual round of Scottish visits. Sainty had been passingly surprised at Cissy's decision to forego a very gay house-party in Sussex, and return quietly to Belchamber at the beginning of August. The young woman did not seem to be in her accustomed health; indeed, she admitted she was quite done up, and needed rest; there had even been a talk of "waters." She had begun to be not quite herself before they left London, and then there had been the curious incident of her fainting at her own party.

Quite early in May, before Lady Charmington's unfortunate visit, Cissy had announced her intention of giving some kind of entertainment, but the difficulty of deciding on what form it should take, and the impossibility of finding an evening when it would not interfere with something else she wanted to do, had combined to defer the execution of the plan till nearly the end of the season. She found it so much easier to go to parties which other people had the trouble of arranging than to take the trouble to arrange one for herself, that Sainty had begun to hope the whole thing might fall through, when she suddenly fixed a date, called in Lady Eccleston to assist her, and telegraphed to Roumania to offer a fabulous sum to a celebrated violinist, who had not been heard in England that summer. By eking out this star with the only two expensive singers who had not yet left the opera, and rigorously excluding from her invitation-list any one to whom it could be a pleasure or excitement to be present, she managed to have a very brilliant and select little gathering indeed, which, but for the unfortunate contretemps above mentioned, would have been an unqualified success. The right dowagers were slumbering in the front row, the right younger people were jostling and chattering in the doorways, the talented performer was executing his most incredible calisthenics, when Sainty, jammed into a far corner of one of the big rooms, became aware of a bustle and commotion near the door of the boudoir. People moved and heaved and whispered, and ceased to bestow even a perfunctory attention on the music, which came rather abruptly to an end. He saw Claude Morland elbow through the crowd with a bottle and a glass, and some one near him said "Lady Belchamber has fainted."

Among the many duties thrown unexpectedly on him by the catastrophe, appeasing the anxiety of the guests and soothing the susceptibilities of the artists, he was startled by the speech, accompanied by a meaning pressure of the hand, with which Alice de Lissac took leave of him. "I am so glad," she whispered; "now, I feel sure all will come right." Enlightenment as to her meaning came most unexpectedly from his mother-in-law next morning when he inquired of her after his wife's health. Lady Eccleston, who had been the last to depart the night before, arrived at an amazingly early hour, and after a long visit to her daughter was still able to appear in Sainty's apartments almost before he had finished his breakfast. She was evidently in high good-humour and began by embracing him tenderly.

"How did you find Cissy?" Sainty asked. "I haven't sent to ask after her yet for fear of disturbing her. She seemed quite worn out last night; I think she has been doing much too much."

"She is not ill," said Lady Eccleston, with a world of meaning. "I will not allow that she is ill."

"I am glad to hear it," said Sainty. "I thought she looked very seedy last night, I must say."

"She will admit nothing," continued her ladyship. "I think I have told you how delicate and reticent she is on certain subjects. Even to me, her mother, and you know we have always been like sisters, she will tell nothing. Do you know what I think? she will tell no one till she has told you. That's it; you may be sure that's it. She will run no risk of your hearing it from any one but her. For heaven's sake don't let her know I have even hinted at anything----"

"What do you mean, Lady Eccleston?" Sainty gasped, a supposition of which only he knew the full grotesqueness beginning to dawn on him.

"Dear, sweet, innocent Sainty!" cried Lady Eccleston, in a transport of archness. "You and my girl are made for one another. You are like a pair of child-lovers in a fairy-tale. I have told nothing, remember that; I will tell nothing. I will not rob dear Cissy of the joy of announcing it herself. Besides, as I say, I can only conjecture; she has absolutely refused to admit it."

"Dear Lady Eccleston," cried Sainty, in great perturbation, "I can't pretend to misunderstand you; but, believe me, I think you are wrong. I am sure---I am almost sure---it cannot be as you suspect."

Lady Eccleston shook her head and pursed her lips mysteriously. "A mother is not deceived," she said. "But recollect I have told you nothing. Cissy would never forgive me. I will not even congratulate you till you tell me. Meanwhile I shan't breathe a word, not a word. Trust me"; and she again folded her son-in-law to her heart. "It was the one thing wanting to our happiness," burst from her, as it were involuntarily, as she hurried away, leaving Sainty too much bewildered to protest.

Two days later they went into the country. Cissy was certainly not feeling well. She asked Sainty if he would mind going sooner than had been settled; she thought rest and country air would set her up. No, she wouldn't see a doctor; there was nothing wrong with her. "I'm just knocked up with being on the go, morning, noon, and night, for months."

"Your mother suggested the weirdest explanation," said Sainty.

Cissy flushed crimson and then grew so pale that he feared she was going to repeat the performance of the night before.

"Mamma really is a bigger fool than I thought," she said hotly. "I didn't think she would have had the idiotcy to carry that nonsense to you. What did you say?"

"What could I say? I told her it was impossible, but she would listen to nothing."

"Of course it's impossible! no one should know that better than you."

On the afternoon of his first day at Belchamber Sainty ordered his little cart and drove as in duty bound to pay his respects to his mother. He had not seen Lady Charmington since she had left his house in wrath, and though he had written to her several times he had received only the briefest and coldest answers. It was not, therefore, with any very pleasing anticipations of the coming interview that he set out to visit her.

It was one of those perfect, cool autumnal days which English people mistake for summer. The open spaces of the park were dappled with pleasant temperate sunlight like the flanks of the deer that fed there. Hundreds of rabbits squatted in the familiar glades or tilted themselves hastily into covert as he passed. Never had his home looked lovelier or more peaceful, or appealed more strongly to him. The woods and coppices called to him with a thousand voices, and his poor heart, starved of all human emotion, answered as only the lonely and despised among her children can answer to the great cry of Nature the universal mother.

Then, as he drove along the smooth green alleys, there came to him the recollection of his brother and of the woman his brother had married. Ever since his visit to them Sainty had thought much about his sister-in-law, and had striven in his own mind to do her justice; terrible as she was to him
æsthetically, he was forced to admit that she was a better sort than her husband. She did think of her children and do her duty by them according to her lights, whereas Arthur thought of no one but himself. After all, were Cissy's ideals in life, except superficially, much less vulgar than Lady Arthur's? He sometimes wondered if it were not better to have been frankly improper before marriage and settle down into an irreproachable wife and mother, than to be a frivolous little worldling, refusing to live with her husband, and lending numberless occasions to the tongue of scandal.

Argue as he would, and rigidly impartial as he strove to make his mental attitude, the thought of his successors poisoned the beauty of the day for him and blotted out the sunshine. It was vain to tell himself that Cynthia's standard of personal conduct was higher than Cecilia's. Her ghastly veneer of gentility shocked his taste more than even her mother's frank vulgarity or Arthur's callous selfishness. To think of her and her shiny-faced babies at Belchamber was to profane his most sacred associations.

He soon found that he need not have doubted his mother's welcome. She received him with what, for her, was almost cordiality. On the rare occasions when Lady Charmington assumed a staid and humourless jocosity, she was wont to affect a Scottish accent and manner of speech, and Sainty noted with surprise this mark of unusual hilarity. "Come ben the house, man," she remarked; "the sight of ye is good for sair een."

"How pretty you have made everything," said Sainty. "Your borders are lovely. There is no one like you for a garden, mother."

Lady Charmington looked round her with a certain pride. "Yes, I think I've improved the place," she said. "Do ye know these late-flowering delphiniums? this is the only kind that blooms as late as this. I thought at one time my hollyhocks were going to have the disease, but I've brought them through it."

"They are lovely; and how beautiful these roses are."

"That's the pink Ayrshire; it's not so common as the white. You know the big bush in the corner of the west wing, I brought it from Scotland with me soon after I married; these are some cuttings from it I took a few years ago, and last autumn I moved them here; haven't they grown?" Thus talking on safe
subjects, they entered the house, where Sainty's admiration was claimed and freely given for various ingenious arrangements and improvements.

"And how's Cissy?" asked Lady Charmington presently, a certain subdued excitement in her look and manner.

"It is very good of you, mother, to ask after her so kindly," Sainty answered. "She doesn't seem to me very well; she's a little knocked up with all her gaieties, I think, but she won't admit there's anything wrong with her which a little rest and country air won't set right."

"Wrong with her! certainly not; what should ail her?" cried Lady Charmington, with the same curious air of meaning more than she said.

"I hope," Sainty began awkwardly, "that you won't remember her rudeness and bad behaviour to you last May; it would be terribly painful to me to have you on bad terms with one another. I quite admit she behaved shockingly to you, but I hope you will overlook it. I feel sure if you will come and see her you'll find her ready to meet you more than half-way."

"I bear no malice," said Lady Charmington, with bewildering good-humour; "and indeed I could find it in my heart to forgive her at this moment worse things than a little incivility to myself."

"That's very kind of you," Sainty said; "but why specially at this moment?" He was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

Lady Charmington leaned forward and looked sharply in his face.

"Is it possible you really don't know?" she said. "You are the queerest couple I ever came across. I made sure you had come here to announce it to me, and I didn't want to take the wind out of your sails by letting you see that I knew it already."

"Know what? announce what?" cried Sainty. He was beginning to divine his mother's meaning; his mind reverted to his conversation with Lady Eccleston. Why did all these women persist in mocking him with congratulations on the impossible as though it were an accomplished fact? "Have you heard from Lady Eccleston?" he asked, with apparent irrelevance.

Lady Charmington pounced on the implied admission.

"Oho! So you are not quite as ignorant as you pretend! But why should you try to keep it from me, when you must know it is the bit of news which it would give me more pleasure to hear than anything in the world?"

"Dear mother," said Sainty, "do you suppose if I had any such news to tell as you seem to imagine, that I shouldn't have rushed to you with it? But it's not so. It can't be so."

"But why shouldn't it be so?" asked Lady Charmington.

"Believe me, it's impossible," Sainty was beginning, and then he recollected that he couldn't tell his mother why it was impossible. "I don't know what's come to everybody," he said lamely.

"Why did you ask if I had heard from Lady Eccleston? It shows you guessed what I meant."

"Because she too has run away with the same idea, and when I told her that she must be mistaken, she only became more positive."

"You see," said Lady Charmington triumphantly, "her own mother thinks so, and she ought to know."

"But really, really, I feel sure you are all wrong. I don't want you to build on this, mother, because I know what a disappointment it will be to you."

"Do you mean to say your wife is not going to have a baby?"

"I certainly think not; she said herself her mother had been talking nonsense. Did she tell it to you as a fact, in so many words?"

"Lady Eccleston's style is sometimes a little involved, but I certainly took her letter to mean---- Oh yes---there's not a doubt of it; she can't have meant anything else." Lady Charmington turned over a pile of letters on her writing-table, and selecting one began to mumble through it. "Um, um, London emptying fast, just on the wing myself, cannot go till I've found some one to read to my dear blind . . . um, um, um. Ah! here it is: 'I cannot refrain from giving you a hint of the great news. I know how it will rejoice your heart. But don't betray me till the dear children tell you themselves. I should not say a word about it, only they are both so absurdly reticent and sensitive; it is quite possible they may neither of them mention it. Dear Cissy was almost angry with me; she tried to make out I was mistaken, but a mother's eye! you and I know when . . .' Well, we needn't go into all that; but you see, her mother's convinced."

"Well," said Sainty, "I can only set on the other side that Cissy denies it herself."

"How about her being taken ill at the party?" It was evident that Lady Eccleston had gone into details.

"People may faint without being in that condition," protested Sainty; "no one should know that better than I. Believe me, you are all building too much on that momentary loss of consciousness, which may as likely as not have come from tight lacing."

Lady Charmington shook her head impatiently. "Her mother says she has never been known to faint before in her life; and any one can see with half an eye she has always laced . . ."

After this the conversation languished perceptibly. It was obviously futile to go on discussing the prospects of an heir, when the parties principally concerned agreed in denying that there were any prospects. Lady Charmington, "convinced against her will," was very much "of the same opinion still"; but balked of the topic on which she burned to dilate, she resolutely declined every other which her son brought forward. Sainty's well-meant efforts to extract information on local or farming subjects were killed by the stony indifference she opposed to them, so that he presently took his leave, without obtaining more than a very qualified and doubtful agreement to his suggestion that she should come and see Cissy.

At first the pertinacity of their two mothers in attributing miraculous offspring to Cissy and himself had seemed only a peculiarly galling mystification. Sainty never knew at just what moment a horrible solution of the puzzle had begun to suggest itself to him as possible. Had he fought against the conviction from the first, or did it come to him slowly and insidiously as his mother marshalled the reasons for her belief against his repeated denials? He could put his finger on no point in time when the suspicion had flashed into his brain; but by the time he reached his own door again, it seemed to him that there had been no hour of his unhappy married life when this terror had not sat grinning behind every trivial incident. He determined to see his wife, to know the worst at once. He asked for her, but learned she was out. "Her ladyship had gone driving late, after tea, and had not come in yet." He had no chance of speech with her through the evening, but when at last she went to her room, he followed boldly, hardly waiting for the answer to his knock before entering the room.

Cissy had thrown herself on the sofa, and the loose sides of the tea-gown she had worn at dinner had a little fallen back. At the sound of the opening door she started up, and drew her draperies so swiftly about her that Sainty could not be sure if he had noticed or only imagined a slight change in her figure.

"You!" she cried.

"Yes," he said, in as steady a voice as he could. "I want to speak to you, and I could find no other chance of seeing you alone."

Their glances crossed and he read in her eyes a confirmation of his worst suspicions. Still he must be sure, must hear it from herself. She had looked startled, almost frightened, as she faced him, then her face took on a dogged, sulky expression.

"Well?" she said.

"I went to see my mother this afternoon," Sainty began.

"Your mother," Cissy broke in. "Oh! she's been making mischief."

"On the contrary, she was all amiability and delight, ready to make it up with you, to forgive everything 'at this moment,' as she said."

"That's very kind of her; but why?"

"She was bursting with congratulations and excitement; she had had a letter from your mother."

Lady Belchamber muttered something very unfilial about her parent. "And what did you say?" she inquired.

"I? What could I say? I said they were both mistaken. That you had told me it was not true; and of course it isn't---it can't be; I don't need to be told that."

He was pleading against his own certainty; from the time he came into the room, he knew what he should hear before he left it. Yet with his whole heart he was begging her still, if it were possible, to deny the shame that had come upon his house. He stood mute and suppliant before her, and she looked at him almost pityingly. Then with a little discouraged gesture she turned away and sat down again on the sofa.

"It is true," she said quietly. "You may as well know it first as last. In any case I couldn't conceal it much longer; and now that mamma has guessed it, she will have told it to at least fifty people already. She little knows what she's doing," she added, with a hard laugh that jarred on Sainty's overstretched nerves.

He had been sure of it, had known it. Yet now that the words were spoken, that the fact confronted him, admitted, undeniable, irrevocable, he staggered with the blow.

"You are going to have a child?" he gasped.

She nodded, and for all answer threw back the covering she had pulled across herself.

"But it is not mine."

"Yours!" impatiently. "How should it be?"

"Good God!"

There was a silence. Sainty moved restlessly about, as agitated as though it were he who was making the confession. Cissy was far the more self-possessed of the two. She sat upon her sofa watching his agonised motions with a faintly inquisitive distaste, as a person of imperfect sympathies might
observe the contortions of some creature he had unwittingly injured.

"I suppose," she said presently, "you want to know whose it is?"

"No, no!" cried Sainty shudderingly. "That least of all. For God's sake don't tell me!" and he made a step towards her as though he would have choked back the name he feared to hear.

Cissy stared. "Queer!" she ejaculated.

There was another pause. A clock struck midnight, and was echoed loudly or faintly by others near or distant. Sainty counted the strokes, and was conscious of irritation when one began before another finished and embroiled his counting.

It was again the woman who spoke first, and the question was characteristic, severely practical.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know---I can't think. Give me time---give me time to think."

Cissy looked at him with undisguised contempt. "I should know what to do," she said. After a while she added, "Of course I can't stay here now."

"I don't know---I don't know," Sainty kept repeating. "We must do nothing in a hurry. Think of all it means, all the consequences."

Cissy shrugged her shoulders. "It seems rather late for that," she remarked. "Besides, we can't keep it to ourselves indefinitely, you know."

"At least give me to-night to get my ideas into some sort of order," Sainty pleaded. "You can't be surprised if this is rather a shock to me, can you?" he added, almost apologetically.

Cissy laughed. "I wonder if any man ever took this announcement in just the same way?" she said.