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Page 20
"I'm not sacrificed. I don't mind it."
"Well, then, _I_ mind it. That's enough. I hate the little beast coming
into my room at night."
"He needn't come. I can go to him."
"All right. If you want to make an invalid scarecrow of yourself before
your time, it's not my business. Only don't come to me for sympathy,
that's all."
With one of her passionate movements, she snatched the child from her
breast, carried him upstairs screaming and laid him on her bed. When the
nurse came she found him writhing and wailing, and his mother on her
knees beside the bed, her face hidden in the counterpane.
"Take him away," sobbed Mrs. Nevill Tyson.
"Ma'am?" said the nurse.
"Take him away, I tell you. I won't--I can't nurse him. It--it makes me
ill."
And forthwith she went off into a fit of hysterics.
It was at this crisis of the baby's fate that Miss Batchelor, of all
people, took it into her head to call. After all, Tyson was Nevill
Tyson, Esquire, of Thorneytoft, and his wife had been somewhere very near
death's door. People who would have died rather than call for any other
reason, called "to inquire." As did Miss Batchelor, saying to herself
that nothing should induce her to go in.
Now as she was inquiring in her very softest voice, who should come up to
the doorstep but Tyson. He smiled as he greeted her. He was polite; he
was charming; for as a matter of fact he had been rather hard-driven of
late, and a little kindness touched him, especially when it came from an
unexpected quarter.
"This is very good of you, Miss Batchelor," said he. "I hope you'll come
in and see my wife."
Miss Batchelor played nervously with her card-case.
"I--I--Would your wi--would Mrs. Tyson care to see me?"
He smiled again. "I think I can answer for that."
And to her own intense surprise, for the first and last time Miss
Batchelor crossed the threshold of Thorneytoft.
They found the little woman sitting in her drawing-room with her hands
before her, and Mrs. Nevill Tyson did not smile at Miss Batchelor as she
greeted her. Perhaps with her feminine instinct and antipathy, she felt
that Miss Batchelor had not come to see _her_. So she smiled at her
husband, and the smile was gall and wormwood to the clever woman; it had
the effect, too, of bringing back to her recollection the occasion on
which she had last seen Mrs. Nevill Tyson smiling. She wondered whether
Mrs. Nevill Tyson also recalled the incident. If she did she must find
the situation rather trying.
Apparently Mrs. Nevill Tyson was so happily constituted that to her
trying situations were a stimulant and a resource. She prattled to Miss
Batchelor about her new side-saddle, and her "friend, Captain
Stanistreet"--any subject that came uppermost and dragged another with
it to the surface.
Miss Batchelor was very kind and sympathetic; she took an interest in the
saddle; she assured Mrs. Nevill Tyson that Drayton Parva had been much
concerned on her account; and she asked to see the baby.
The next instant she was sorry she had done so, for Tyson, who had
continued to be charming, went out of the room when the baby came in.
The child was laid in Mrs. Nevill Tyson's lap, and she looked at it with
a gay indifference. "Isn't he a queer thing?" said she. "He isn't pretty
a bit, so you needn't say so. Nevill calls him a boiled shrimp, and a
little rat. He is rather like a little rat--a baby rat, when it's all
pink and squirmy, you know, and its eyes just opened--they've got such
pretty bright eyes. But I'm afraid baby's eyes are more like pig's eyes.
Well, _they're_ pretty too. As he's so ugly I expect he's going to be
clever, like Nevill. They say he's like me. What do you think? Look at
his forehead. Do you think he's going to be clever?"
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