Chapter Twenty-four

[Admin]

THOUGH the birth of an heir to the house of Belchamber might naturally be supposed a festive occasion, it brought little satisfaction to those principally concerned. It is true that Lady Charmington talked broad lowland for weeks; nor was Lady Eccleston, who kept a supply of conventional sentiment always on tap, likely to be wanting at such a time; but in spite of every grandmotherly effort to impart a correct sense of rejoicing, a certain flatness attended what should have been such an auspicious event. Cissy, entirely preoccupied by terror of physical suffering, insisted that her confinement should take place in London, where she would be within reach of the best professional aid, to the extreme disgust of her mother-in-law, who had decided that Belchamber was the appropriate scene on which the newcomer's eyes should first open. Sainty, being appealed to, expressed the most complete indifference on the subject; he said he didn't suppose it mattered to the baby where it was born, or that it would be likely to retain the smallest recollection of the event. "It will be a great disappointment to everybody," Lady Charmington remarked. "Besides, it will mean your not being here at Christmas. How do you expect your people to rejoice in the birth of an heir, if you slink away and let it happen in London, like anybody else's child?"

"How do you know it will be an heir?" Sainty said. "Why shouldn't it be a girl?"

His mother disdained to notice such a preposterous suggestion.

"It ought to be here," she kept repeating.

"I wasn't born here," Sainty said.

"That was quite different; Belchamber wasn't our home in those days. Your father and I hardly ever came here in the old lord's time; for that matter, they weren't here much themselves. Besides, I wanted to be with my mother; there is nothing to prevent Cissy having her mother with her here; things are very different for her from what I had to put up with. I should like to have seen my mother-in-law allowing me to be confined in her house! but your poor father felt it very much."

"Well," Sainty said at last, "you can settle it with Cissy; if you can persuade her, you're welcome to; I never can, and in the present case I don't care to."

Every allusion to the coming event was the turning of a sword in his heart. His mother's restrained eagerness was not less terrible to him than Lady Eccleston's loud jubilation.

He never knew if Lady Charmington availed herself of his suggestion that she should appeal to Cissy. Certainly, if she did, it was with no success, for long before there was any possibility of the child making its appearance, Lady Belchamber removed to London, taking her parent with her. Cissy, as usual, when frightened or needing help, turned to her mother, for whom, as we know, she cherished no very profound respect at other times; and Lady Eccleston was not even permitted to return to her own house in Chester Square, but must take up her abode with her daughter, who considered it a great concession if she allowed her to go out for an hour's shopping. It is not to be wondered at if mamma became a little important under the circumstances, and gave herself airs in writing to the other dowager, who must have hated having to stay and eat her heart out at Belchamber, with no hand in what touched her so nearly.

Poor Lady Charmington abounded in strange, recondite lore, and gave much advice which was a little out of date at the stage proceedings had reached. "On no account let her mother coddle your wife," she wrote to Sainty. "If she wants a son, make her take exercise and not be too luxurious or over-eat herself."

Every day the letters came, advocating a Spartan régime; but the messages never reached their destination. Sainty would have cut his tongue out sooner than address a word to Cissy on the subject, who, none the less, produced in due course an infant of the desired sex.

Lady Charmington hurried up to Roehampton, and actually dragged poor old Lady Firth into London to visit her great-grandson. The old lady, who had become nearly blind, and now hardly ever left her own fireside, peered curiously at the baby through two pairs of spectacles.

"I don't know who he is like," she said. "You have a look of your father, Sainty, but you are more like our family; this little lamb isn't like either. No, certainly not a bit like you, nor yet like your wife, who is so fair. I don't know, I'm sure, who he takes after."

"Does it matter much, grandmamma," Sainty asked, "as long as he is strong and healthy?"

His mother turned on him promptly. "Oh! you never think anything matters. Can't you even take an interest in your own first-born son?"

"Come, mother, it doesn't follow that I take no interest because I don't think it matters who he looks like," Sainty protested meekly.

He had several occasions to curse the propensity common to the whole female sex, when brought into the presence of a newborn babe, to hunt down and fix a likeness for it to some one or other of its kinsfolk. It seemed as though the one important thing to do for the little Lord Charmington was to determine this vexed question of resemblance. The child was of a marked type, too, with long-lashed dark eyes, and an unusual quantity of very black hair, as far removed from Sainty's sandy insignificance as from the delicate fairness of his wife.

At last the matter was set at rest quite unexpectedly, and Sainty breathed more freely. The duchess, who had come to town for a little Christmas shopping, called to inquire after Cissy, and requested to be shown the baby.

"Eh bien! vous voilà père!" she remarked, looking rather quizzically at her grandson, as he piloted her upstairs. "My compliments! And how is Monsieur Bébé? Is he pretty, at least? brown or blond, a Chambers, a Bigorr, or," with the faintest pause of indescribable insolence, "an Eccleston?"

Belchamber took dexterous advantage of opening doors, giving warning of steps, and such small attentions, to avoid giving any direct answer, but he might have saved himself the trouble. The eternal topic was at once brought up by the monthly nurse, as she proudly displayed her charge.

"We can't think who he is like, your grace," she said, folding the flannel back from the tiny face. "Just look at his beautiful great eyes, and did ever you see such a head of hair on a babe?"

Sainty could have throttled her. "That's the one thing every one seems to think of," he said rather testily.

"Like?" said the duchess. "There can be no question; he's like me. You know the miniature of me as a little girl---the child is the image of it."

Sainty started; he had so entirely forgotten that her grace was ever dark, that the resemblance had escaped him, but once pointed out it was salient. He felt like a criminal who discovers that the detective he has been dodging is on the track of some one else. After all, she was his grandmother too!

"Of course!" he cried, "how stupid every one has been not to think of it." And the next time the unwelcome subject was mentioned in his presence (by his mother, who had been showing the precious infant to Alice de Lissac), he said quite naturally, "Oh, we've settled that question. He's just like the miniature at Sunborough House of the duchess when she was a child."

Lady Charmington, who loved her mother-in-law no better than Cissy did hers, was most unwilling to admit the likeness, but could not deny it; and there being no doubt that baby derived his appearance from the member of the family she least wished him to resemble, was in future as averse as her son could desire to all discussion of what had occupied her so much.

Lady Eccleston, on the contrary, who loved all great people, was enchanted to point out the likeness to every member of her huge acquaintance. "Isn't he like the dear duchess?" she would cry. "It is so clever of him to have picked out the most beautiful of all his relations to take after, bless him!"

As time went on, the shortlived interest in the hope of the Chamberses rapidly waned. The bonfires in his honour had hardly burnt themselves out before this poor little scion of a noble house found himself in as much danger of being altogether neglected as if he had been of quite humble birth. Lady Charmington returned to the country, and Lady Eccleston, having provided a grand nurse and nursery-maid with unimpeachable testimonials out of one of the most aristocratic nurseries in the land, gradually allowed herself to be re-absorbed by her numerous avocations, social and philanthropic.

Cissy has been most inadequately represented if it need be stated that the very last person to trouble her head about the poor little thing was its mother. She was entirely at one with the fashionable accoucheur who attended her, in his opinion that to nurse the child would be far too great a strain on her constitution. After the briefest period of seclusion which the same authority could be got to say was sufficient for her own restoration, and a flying visit to the seaside, she seemed to have but one object in life, to make up by extra assiduity for the weeks she had been compelled to sacrifice from the engrossing occupation of amusing herself. If before she had been much out of her own house, she was now hardly ever in it. The only limit to the number of her engagements was the fear lest she should be betrayed into doing something that was not "smart"; and even with this important restriction, they were far too numerous to admit of her having any time to bestow upon her son.

As for Sainty, he hardly ever saw her. In so large a house, with a perfectly mutual desire to keep apart, it was not difficult to avoid meeting. He had had one necessary interview with her after the birth of the boy, in which he had told her some very plain truths.

"You may as well understand the situation quite clearly," he said. "In return for the various things you enjoy as a result of being believed to be my wife, I have hitherto asked nothing of you; after what has happened, I would not take it if you offered it on your knees. I made just one condition, which you have not thought fit to observe, that there should be no scandal; to avoid it, I have sacrificed my last shred of self-respect. Don't, therefore, think that you can count on a like cowardice on my part in the future. I pretend to no sort of control over your actions. What you do is of no consequence to me; but on just this one thing I insist: I must never hear you talked about, and, above all, there must be no repetition of this---this occurrence."

"I see," said Cissy. "Having by hook or by crook got the heir for which you and your mother were so anxious, you have no further use for me, and will seize the next opportunity to get rid of me."

Sainty looked at her a moment, so antagonistic, so hard, so insolent in her youth and beauty, to which her late recovery lent a character almost ethereal. Bitter as her taunt was, he could not deny its substantial truth.

"Precisely," he said, and left her without another word.

While Cissy immersed herself in social frivolities, Sainty was trying to find in work forgetfulness of the child he was ashamed to remember. He devoted long hours to humble toil and study, of which the only result would be a paragraph in the report of some learned society, read by no one but its own members. He attended the debates in the House of Lords with unparalleled assiduity, and came to be a familiar figure in the gallery on important nights in the other House. The scarcity of Radical peers gave him an extrinsic value for the leaders of his party, while his patience, powers of work, and known interest in all schemes of beneficence, marked him as specially designed by Providence to serve on Parliamentary Committees.

There was one important point of difference between the couple. While Cissy's absorption in her favourite pursuits was quite natural and genuine, and she found no difficulty whatever in forgetting her maternal duties, it was only by consistent effort that Sainty succeeded in shutting out the recollection of his shame. The image of the baby, with its tell-tale dark eyes, was perpetually between him and the page he was writing or the pamphlet on which he was trying to fix his attention.

As we know, his rooms were on the ground-floor of the London house, while the nurseries were up three flights of stairs; it seemed impossible that any echo should penetrate from them to his study, yet he was always fancying that he detected faint sounds of crying from the upper regions of the house. Sometimes he would stop in his work and listen, and then, convinced that his imagination had played him a trick, turn again to his reading or writing, only to be haunted by this illusive wailing as before.

One day in the early spring, the child being then some three months old, this impression was more than usually persistent. At last, exasperated by his inability to fix his mind on what he was doing, Sainty pushed away his papers and went out upon the back stairs to listen. This time there was no question of imagination. Perhaps some door usually closed had been left open, but whatever the explanation, there was no doubt that a most real and material lamentation, such as the human infant alone is capable of producing, was echoing through the house. He returned to his table and sat down again. "I suppose babies of that age always yell," he said to himself, and he recalled Arthur's complaint of that tendency in his own offspring. Why, of all people in the world, need the baby's crying make him think of his brother? The recollection of that stucco rectory in the shires, where the birth of the little Lord Charmington must have aroused anything but enthusiasm, made him start and tremble like a felon.

For a moment he fancied the noise had ceased, but a second visit to the landing convinced him such was not the case. He looked at the clock. It was almost time for him to go down to Westminster; he would go out and walk a little first---sometimes he thought he did not have enough fresh air---it would do him good. He put away his papers, gathered together some loose sheets of notes that he wanted, and left the room.

What made him turn to the stairs instead of the front door he never quite knew. Some occult power seemed to draw his feet. He couldn't go out to do battle for the children of the poor with that lamentable wailing ringing in his ears, and make no inquiry into what ailed the child under his own roof.

He had not mounted to these upper floors since he had conducted the duchess thither, but if he had been in any doubt about the room, the cries, which seemed to redouble in force as he drew nearer, would have been a quite sufficient guide. Through the wide-open door Sainty could see the interior of the nursery before he entered. Lady Eccleston had given the rein to her grandmotherly fancy in the provision of all things needful and luxurious for the young heir. He was at least sumptuously lodged; the walls were gay with sanitary illustrations of juvenile literature from Miss Greenaway's charming designs; buttercups and daisies sprinkled the window hangings; everything streamed with pale blue satin ribbon, and the very powder-box, of choicest ivory, had the mystic word "Baby" slanting in turquoises across the lid. But nothing was ranged, or ordered, or in its proper place. The costly little garments so lavishly provided were tossed about with careless profusion, damp cloths trailed over the floor, a common enamelled saucepan for heating the child's food had been set down on a lace robe, and half-washed-out feeding-bottles mingled on the table with the materials from which the nurse had evidently been manufacturing a new hat for herself.

The room was bare of human presence save for the emitter of the howls, who was lying alone in his cot, roaring himself purple in the face. He had kicked himself free of his wrappings, and his poor little legs were quite cold to the touch. Without attempting to cope with the complication of integuments, Sainty loosely pulled the coverlet over the child, and then looked with horror and anxiety at the convulsed face. What was to be done? "Don't!" he said imploringly, in no particular expectation of being understood, but from a general instinct to say something. "Please don't!"

Whether the sense of a human presence was of some comfort to the baby, or it was only startled by the sound of an unfamiliar voice, it is certain that it intermitted its screaming, and slowly unpuckering its face, allowed the hidden eyes to appear. They were all wet and shiny with tears, their long lashes glued into points like a series of tiny camel's-hair paint-brushes.

Sainty wondered if he dared wipe them. "It can't be comfortable to have one's face all slobbered over like that," he thought, and taking out his handkerchief began, as lightly and tenderly as he could, to remove some of the superfluous moisture that seemed to exude from every feature. The baby, far from being sensible of this attention, showed unmistakable signs of being about to resume its lament. Sainty swiftly desisted from his endeavours, and once more implored its forbearance.

The baby, with its face all made up for a fresh howl, paused suddenly when, so to speak, half-way there, and once more opened its eyes. It stared solemnly at Sainty and Sainty stared back at it. What dumb interchange of intelligence passed between them it would be hard to say, but presently a faint, windy smile flickered across one side of the baby's face leaving the other immutably grave.

Sainty was transported with gratitude; he nodded and smiled repeatedly at the baby and tried to think of pleasant noises to make to it. One of the little hands had broken loose from under the coverlet and was beating the air---sparring at life with the aimless hostility of infancy. Very gingerly Sainty laid his forefinger against the palm, and instantly the absurd fingers closed round it and held him prisoner.

Long he stood beside the cradle gently swaying the hand that held his own back and forth and contemplating the baby, which, soothed by the rhythmic movement, seemed inclined to sleep. Since it ceased crying, its face had become a much pleasanter and more normal colour, and, as the suffusing crimson died away, Sainty could notice how the poor chin was chafed and red where it had rubbed on the wet, unchanged bib; the tiny nails, too, were edged with black, and surely, he thought, a carefully tended baby ought not to smell as sour as this one did. It was being borne in upon him that the child was neglected, a thought which made him not less indignant that he could not feel wholly without blame in the matter. True, the child was not his, but by acknowledging it he had accepted responsibility; he knew far too well how little reason there was to expect that its mother would occupy herself with such matters to think of sheltering himself behind the plea that it was her business. It was monstrous that the sins of its parents should be visited on this helpless creature. The queer little claw still grasped his finger, and he was still swinging it and crooning gently, when the nurse hurried into the room and was visibly taken aback at sight of her master. At once she was voluble in explanation and excuse.

"That was the worst of these girls, you never could trust 'em; her back wasn't a minute turned that that Emma wasn't off to her own affairs. She hadn't but just stepped downstairs to give the orders herself about his lordship's milk, which, it was surprising, with all these lazy servants in the house, never could be sent up at the right time, and had particularly told the girl not to leave the room for a second till she came back . . ." with much more to the same effect.

Sainty grimly eyed the artificial roses she was whisking out of sight with clumsy dexterity, in her attempt to bring order out of chaos, with one hand, while with the other she made playful passes at the baby, crying "Did he?" and "Was he, then?" and "Nana's here, precious."

Neither Sainty nor the baby was in the least taken in by this transparent comedy.

"I think this child is not properly looked after," the former said sternly.

"Not looked after!" Nurse was outraged in her finest feelings. "Not looked after! She didn't know what his lordship meant. She was never away for a minute all day and often up half the night with the little darling; not that she grudged it, not she; she was well aware it was but her duty and what she was paid for, but it was hard after all to be told she didn't look after the dear child, and she did think no one who hadn't done it had any idea what it was to be with a young infant at night. . . ."

And just then the peccant underling returning from her own private expedition in neglect of her duty, she made a diversion by falling on her and smiting her figuratively hip and thigh in a frenzy of righteous wrath.

The baby's official guardians having for the time being returned to their posts, Sainty did not judge it necessary to remain and enter into details in which he might easily betray his ignorance. Having made his sweeping indictment and seen his heir restored to tranquillity by a bottle, he returned to his own neglected duties, feeling a little as if the Lord Chancellor might address to him some of the scathing reproaches he had just heard flung at the head of Emma.

He tried to immerse himself in his usual employments, but, do what he would, he was haunted for the rest of the day and far into the night by the vision of the piteous, dirty baby left to howl by itself in the midst of its luxurious surroundings, and felt the cold clasp of the tiny fingers growing gradually warm and moist upon his own.