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Page 32
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."
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