Chapter 9 AN UNNATURAL MOTHER

Next morning a rumor set out from three distinct centers, Thorneytoft, Meriden, and "The Cross-Roads," to the effect that Tyson had quarreled seriously with Stanistreet. His wife, as might be imagined, was the cause. After a hot dispute, in which her name had been rather freely bandied about, it seems that Tyson had picked the Captain up by the scruff of the neck and tumbled him out of the house.

By the evening the scandal was blazing like a fire.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson was undoubtedly a benefactor to her small public. She had roused the intelligence of Drayton Parva as it had never been roused before. Conjecture followed furtively on her footsteps, and inference met her and stared her in the face. No circumstance, not even Sir Peter's innocent admiration, was too trivial to furnish a link in the chain of evidence against her. Not that a breath of slander touched Sir Peter. He, poor old soul, was simply regarded as the victim of diabolical fascinations.

After the discomfiture of Stanistreet, Mrs. Nevill Tyson's movements were watched with redoubled interest. Her appearances were now strictly limited to those large confused occasions which might be considered open events-Drayton races, church, the hunt ball, and so on. Only the casual stranger, languishing in magnificent boredom by Miss Batchelor's side, followed Mrs. Nevill Tyson with a kindly eye.

"Who is that pretty little woman in the pink gown?" he would ask in his innocence.

"Oh, that is Mrs. Nevill Tyson. She is pretty," would be the answer, jerked over Miss Batchelor's shoulder. (That habit was growing on her.)

"And who or what is Mrs. Nevill Tyson?"

Whereupon Miss Batchelor would suddenly recover her self-possession and reply, "Not a person you would care to make an intimate friend of."

And at this the stranger smiled or looked uncomfortable according to his nature.

Public sympathy was all with Tyson. If ever a clever man ruined his life by a foolish marriage, that man was Tyson. Opinions differed as to the precise extent of Mrs. Tyson's indiscretion; but her husband was held to have saved his honor by his spirited ejection of Captain Stanistreet, and he was respected accordingly.

Meanwhile the hero of this charming fiction was unconscious of the fine figure he cut. He was preoccupied with the unheroic fact, the ridiculous cause of a still more ridiculous quarrel. Looking back on it, he was chiefly conscious of having made more or less of a fool of himself.

After all, Tyson knew men. On mature reflection it was simply impossible to regard Stanistreet as a purveyor of puerile gossip, or seriously to believe that such gossip had been the cause of his disaster. That was only the last of a long train of undignified circumstances which had made his position in Drayton Parva insupportable; it lent a little more point to the innuendo on every tongue, the intelligence in every eye. He was sick with disgust, and consumed with the desire to get out of it all, to cut Drayton Parva for good. The accursed place was trying to stare him out of countenance. Everywhere he turned there was a stare: it was on the villagers' faces, behind Miss Batchelor's eye-glass, on the bare fields with their sunken fences, and on that abominable bald-faced house of his.

No doubt this was the secret of the business that took Tyson up to town so many times that winter. He said nothing to his wife that could account for his frequent absence, but she believed that he was looking about for the long-promised flat; and when he remarked casually one morning that he meant to leave Thorneytoft in the spring she was not surprised. Neither was Mrs. Wilcox. The flat had appeared rather often in her conversation of late. Mrs. Wilcox was dimly, fitfully aware of the state of public opinion; but it did not disturb her in the least. She at once assumed the smile and the attitude of Hope; she smiled on her son-in-law's aberrations as she smiled on the ways of the universe at large, and for the same reason, that the one was about as intelligible as the other. She went about paying visits, and in the course of conversation gave people to understand that Mr. Tyson's residence in Drayton had been something of a concession on his part from the first. So large a land-owner had a great many tiresome claims and obligations, as well as a position to keep up in his county; but there could be no doubt that Nevill was quite lost in the place, and that the true sphere of his activity was town. Mrs. Wilcox's taste for vague and ample phrases was extremely convenient at times.

If his wife was the last person to be consulted in Tyson's arrangements, it may be supposed that no great thought was taken for his son and heir. Not that the little creature would have been much affected by any change in his surroundings; he was too profoundly indifferent to the world. It had taken all the delicious tumult of the spring, all the flaming show of summer, to move him to a few pitiful smiles. He had none of the healthy infant's passion and lusty grasp of life; he seemed to touch it as he had touched his mother's breasts, delicately, tentatively, with some foregone fastidious sense of its illusion. What little interest he had ever taken in the thing declined perceptibly with autumn, when he became too deeply engrossed with the revolutions taking place in his sad little body to care much for anything that went on outside it.

Hitherto he had not had to suffer from the neglect of servants. He was so delicate from his birth that his mother had been strongly advised to keep on the trained nurse till he was a year old. But Mrs. Nevill Tyson knew better than that. For some reason she had taken a dislike to her trained nurse; perhaps she was a little bit afraid of the professional severity which had so often held in check her fits of hysterical passion. Aided by Mrs. Wilcox and her own intuitions, after rejecting a dozen candidates on the ground of youth and frivolity, she chose a woman with calm blue eyes and a manner that inspired confidence. Swinny, engaged at an enormous salary, had absolute authority in the nursery. And if it had been possible to entertain a doubt as to this excellent woman's worth, the fact that she had kept the Tyson baby alive so long was sufficient testimonial to her capabilities.

But Swinny was in love-in love with Pinker. And to be in love with Pinker was to live in a perfect delirium of hopes and fears. No sooner was Swinny delivered over to the ministers of love, who dealt with her after their will, than Baby too agonized and languished. His food ceased to nourish him, his body wasted. They bought a cow for his sole use and benefit, and guarded it like a sacred animal but to no purpose. He drank of its milk and grew thinner than ever. Strange furrows began to appear on his tiny face, with shadows and a transparent tinge like the blue of skim-milk. As the pure air of Drayton did so little for him, Mrs. Nevill Tyson wondered how he would bear the change to London.

"Shall I take him, Nevill?" she asked.

"Take him if you like," was the reply. "But you might as well poison the little beast at home while you're about it."

So it was an understood thing that when Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson settled in town, Baby was to be left behind at Thorneytoft for the good of his health. It was his father's proposal, and his mother agreed to it in silence.

Her indifference roused the severest comments in the household. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was an unnatural mother. From the day she weaned him, no one had ever seen her caress the child. She handled him with a touch as light and fleeting as his own; her lips seemed to shrink from contact with his pure soft skin. There could be no doubt of it, Mrs. Nevill Tyson's behavior was that of a guilty woman-guilty in will at any rate, if not in deed.

A shuddering whisper went through the house; it became a murmur, and the murmur became an articulate, unmistakable voice. The servants were sitting in judgment on her. Swinny spoke from the height of a lofty morality; Pinker, being a footman of the world, took a humorous, not to say cynical view, which pained Swinny. Such a view could never have been taken by one whose affections were deeply engaged.

The conclusions arrived at in the servants' hall soon received a remarkable confirmation.

It was on a Monday. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was seen to come down to breakfast in an unusually cheerful frame of mind. Tyson was away; he had been up in town for three weeks, and was expected home that evening. She looked for letters. There were two-one from the master of the house; one also from Stanistreet, placed undermost by the discreet Pinker. The same thoughtful observer of character noticed that his mistress blushed and put her letters aside instead of reading them at once. At ten Swinny came into the breakfast-room, bearing Baby. This was the custom of the house. By courtesy the most unnatural mother may be credited with a wish to see her child once a day.

This morning Mrs. Nevill Tyson did not so much as raise her head. She was sitting by the fire in her usual drooping guilty attitude. Swinny noticed that the hearth was strewn with the fragments of torn letters. She put the baby down on a rug by the window, and left his mother alone with him to see what she would do.

She did nothing. Baby lay on the floor sucking his little claw-like fingers, and stirring feebly in the sun. Mrs. Nevill Tyson continued to gaze abstractedly at nothing. When Swinny came back after a judicious interval, he was still lying there, and she still sitting as before. She had not moved an inch. How did Swinny know that? Why, the tail of Mrs. Tyson's dress was touching the exact spot on the carpet it had touched before. (Swinny had made a note of the pattern.) And the child might have cried himself into fits before she'd have stirred hand or foot to comfort him. Baby found himself caught up in a rapture and strained to his faithful Swinny's breast. Whereupon he cried. He had been happier lying in the sun.

Swinny turned round to the motionless figure by the hearth, and held the child well up in her arms.

"Baby thinks that his mamma would like to see him," said Swinny, in an insinuating manner.

A hard melancholy voice answered, "I don't want to see him. I don't want to see him any more."

All the same Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned and looked after him as he was carried through the doorway. She could just see the downy back of his innocent head, and his ridiculous frock bulging roundly over the nurse's arm. But whether she was thinking of him at that moment God only knows.

The household was informed that its master would not return that evening after all; that no date was fixed for his coming.

Later on Pinker, the guardian of the hearth, finding those fragments of letters tried to put them together again. Tyson's letter it was impossible to restore. It had been torn to atoms in a vicious fury of destruction. But by great good luck Stanistreet's (a mere note) had been more tenderly dealt with. It was torn in four neat pieces; the text, though corrupt, was fairly legible, and left little to the ingenuity of the scholiast. The Captain was staying in the neighborhood. He proposed to call on Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Would she be at home on Wednesday afternoon? Now, to Pinker's certain knowledge, Mrs. Nevill Tyson had taken the letters to the post herself that morning. That meant secrecy, and secrecy meant mischief.

How was she going to get through the next two days? This was provided for. Baby was a bad sleeper. That night he cried as he had never cried before. Not violently; he was too weak for that, but with a sound like the tongue-tied whimper of some tiny animal. Swinny had slept through worse noise many a night. Now he cried from midnight to cock-crow; and on Tuesday morning Swinny was crying too. He had had one of his "little attacks," after which he began to show signs of rapid wasting.

He had got something which Mrs. Nevill Tyson had never heard of-"marasmus," the doctor called it. She hoped it was nothing very bad.

Then the truth came out piecemeal, through Swinny's confession and the witness of her fellow-servants. The wretched woman's movements had been wholly determined by the movements of Pinker; and she had been in the habit of leaving the child in the servants' hall, where the cook, being an affectionate motherly woman, made much of him, and fed him with strange food. He had had an "attack" the last time she did this, and Swinny, who valued her place for more reasons than one, had been afraid to say anything about it. Preoccupied with her great passion, she had been insensible to the signs of sickness that showed themselves from day to day. In other words, there had been shameful, pitiful neglect.

Terrified and repentant, Swinny confessed, and became faithful again. She sat up all night with the child wrapped in blankets in her lap. She left nothing for his mother to do but to sit and look at him, or go softly to and fro, warming blankets. (It was odd, but Mrs. Nevill Tyson never questioned the woman's right to exclusive possession of the child.) She had written to Nevill by the first post to tell him of his son's illness. That gave him time to answer the same night.

Wednesday came. There was no answer to her letter; and the baby was worse. The doctor doubted if he would pull through.

Mrs. Wilcox was asked to break the news to her daughter. She literally broke it. That is to say, she presented it in such disjointed fragments that it would have puzzled a wiser head than Mrs. Nevill Tyson's to make out the truth. Mrs. Wilcox had been much distressed by Molly's strange indifference to her maternal claims; but when you came to think of it, it was a very good thing that she had not cared more for the child, if she was not to keep him. All the same, Mrs. Wilcox knew that she had an extremely disagreeable task to perform.

They were in the porch at Thorneytoft, the bare white porch that stared out over the fields, and down the great granite road to London. As Mrs. Nevill Tyson listened she leaned against the wall, with her hands clasped in front or her and her head thrown back to stop her tears from falling. Her throat shook. She was so young-only a child herself! A broad shaft of sunshine covered her small figure; her red dress glowed in the living light. Looking at her, a pathetic idea came to Mrs. Wilcox. "You never had a frock that became you more," she murmured between two sighs. Mrs. Nevill Tyson heard neither murmur nor sighs. And yet her senses did their work. For years afterwards she remembered that some one was standing there in the bright sunshine, dressed in a red gown, some one who answered when she was spoken to; but that she-she-stood apart in her misery and was dumb.

"I don't understand," she said at last. "Why can't you say what you mean? Is there danger?"

Mrs. Wilcox looked uncomfortable. "Yes, there is some danger. But while there is life there is-hope."

"If there is danger-" she paused, looking away toward the long highroad, "if there is danger, I shall send for Nevill. He will come."

She telegraphed: "Baby dangerously ill. Come at once."

She waited feverishly for an answer. There was none. To the horror of the household, she gave orders that when Captain Stanistreet called she would see him. As she could not tear herself from the baby, there was nothing for it but to bring Stanistreet to her.

To his intense astonishment Louis was led up into a wide bare room on the third story: He was in that mood when we are struck with the unconscious symbolism of things. By the high fire-guard, the walls covered with cheerful oleographs, the toys piled in the corner, he knew that this was the abode of innocence, a child's nursery. The place was flooded with sunshine. A woman sat by the fire with a small yellowish bundle in her lap. Opposite her sat Mrs. Nevill Tyson, with her eyes fixed on the bundle. She looked up in Stanistreet's face as he came in, but held out no hand.

"Louis," she whispered hoarsely when he was near, "where's Nevill?"

"In London."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes."

"Is he coming?"

"I don't know. I didn't speak to him. I-I was in a hurry."

She had turned her head. Her eyes never wandered from that small yellowish bundle. Up to the last she had let it lie on the nurse's knee. She had not dared to take it; perhaps she felt she was unworthy. He followed her gaze.

"He's very ill," said she. "Look at him."

The nurse moved a fold of blanket from the child's face, and Stanistreet gazed at Tyson's son. He tried to speak.

"Sh-sh-" whispered Mrs. Nevill Tyson. "He's sleeping."

"Dying, sir," muttered the nurse. The woman drew in her knees, tightening her hold on the child. Her face was stained with tears. (She had loved the baby before she loved Pinker. Remorse moved her and righteous indignation.) Mrs. Nevill Tyson's nostrils twitched; deep black rings were round her eyes. Passion and hunger were in them, but there were no tears.

And as Stanistreet looked from one woman to the other, he understood. He picked up the bundle and removed it to its mother's knee. All her soul passed into the look wherewith she thanked him. Swinny, tear-stained but inexorable, stood aloof, like rigid Justice, weighing her mistress in the balance.

"He's dying, Molly," he said gently.

She shook her head. "No; he's not dying. God isn't cruel. He won't let him die."

She turned the child's face to her breast, hoping perhaps that his hands would move in the old delicious way.

He did not stir, and she laid him on his back again and looked at him. His lips and the hollows under his eyes were blue. The collapse had come. Louis knelt down and put his hand over the tiny heart.

A spasm passed over the baby's face, simulating a smile. Then Mrs. Nevill Tyson fell to smiling too.

"See"-she said.

But Stanistreet had seen enough. He rose from his knees and left her.

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