CHAPTER XXXI
THE OFFER DECLINED
Estelle talked to Raymond and endeavoured to interest him in Sabina's child.
"Everybody who understands babies says that he's a lovely and perfect one," declared Estelle. "I hope you're going to look at him before you go away, because he's yours. And I believe he will be like you, some day. Do the colours of babies' eyes change, like kittens' eyes, Ray?"
"Haven't the slightest idea," he answered. "You may be quite sure I shall take care of it, Estelle, and see that it has everything it wants."
"Somehow they're not pleased with you all the same," she answered. "I don't understand about it, but they evidently feel that you ought to have married Sabina. I suppose you're not properly his father if you don't marry her?"
"That's nonsense, Estelle. I'm quite properly his father, and I'm going to be a jolly good father too. But I don't want to be married. I don't believe in it."
"If Sabina knew you were going to love him and be good to him, she would be happier, I hope."
"I'm going to see her presently," he said.
"And see the baby?"
"Plenty of time for that."
"There's time, of course, Ray. But he's changing. He's five weeks old to-morrow, and I can see great changes. He can just begin to laugh now. Things amuse him we don't know. I expect babies are like dogs and can see what we can't."
"I'll look at him if Sabina likes."
"Of course she'll like. It's rather horrid of you, in a way, being able to go on with your work for so many weeks without looking at him. It's really rather a slight on Sabina, Ray. If I'd had a baby, and his father wouldn't look at him for week after week, I should be vexed. And so is Sabina."
"Next time you see her, ask her to name a day and I'll go whenever she likes."
Estelle was delighted.
"That's lovely of you and it will cheer her up very much, for certain," she answered. Then she ran away, for to arrange such a meeting seemed the most desirable thing in the world to her at that moment. To Sabina she went as fast as her legs could take her, and appreciating that he had sent this guileless messenger to ensure a meeting without preliminaries and without prejudice, Sabina hid her feelings and specified a time on the following day.
"If he'll come to see me to-morrow in the dinner-hour, that will be best. I'll be alone after twelve o'clock."
"You'll show him the baby, won't you, Sabina?"
"He won't want to see it."
"Why not?"
"Does he want to?"
"Honestly he doesn't seem to understand how wonderful the baby is," explained the child. "Ray's going to be a splendid father to him, Sabina. He's quite interested; only men are different from us. Perhaps they never feel much interest till babies can talk to them. My father says he wasn't much interested in me till I could talk, so it may be a general thing. But when Ray sees him, he'll be tremendously proud of him."
Sabina said no more, and when Raymond arrived to see her at the time she appointed, he found her waiting near the entrance of 'The Magnolias.'
She wore a black dress and was looking very well and very handsome. But the expression in her eyes had changed. He put out his hand, but she did not take it.
"Mister Churchouse has kindly said we can talk in the study, Mister
Ironsyde."
He followed her, and when they had come to the room, hoped that she was quite well again. Then he sat in a chair by the table and she took a seat opposite him. She did not reply to his wish for her good health, but waited for him to speak. She was not sulky, but apparently indifferent. Her fret and fume were smothered of late. Now that the supreme injury was inflicted and she had borne a child out of wedlock, Sabina's frenzies were over. The battle was lost. Life held no further promises, and the denial of the great promise that it had offered and taken back again, numbed her. She was weary of the subject of herself and the child. She could even ask Mr. Churchouse for books to occupy her mind during convalescence. Yet the slumbering storm in her soul awoke in full fury before the man had spoken a dozen words.
She looked at Raymond with tired eyes, and he felt that, like himself, she was older, wiser, different. He measured the extent of her experiences and felt sorry for her.
"Sabina," he said. "I must apologise for one mistake. When I asked you to come back to me and live with me, I did a caddish thing. It wasn't worthy of me, or you. I'm awfully sorry. I forgot myself there."
She flushed.
"Can that worry you?" she asked. "I should have thought, after what you'd already done, such an added trifle wouldn't have made you think twice. To ruin a woman body and soul—to lie to her and steal all she's got to give under pretence of marriage—that wasn't caddish, I suppose—that wasn't anything to make you less pleased with yourself. That was what we may expect from men of honour and right bringing up?"
"Don't take this line, or we shan't get on. If, after certain things happened, I had still felt we—"
"Stop," she said, "and hear me. You're making my blood burn and my fingers itch to do something. My hands are strong and quick—they're trained to be quick. I thought I could come to this meeting calm and patient enough. I didn't know I'd got any hate left in me—for you, or the world. But I have—you've mighty soon woke it again; and I'm not going to hear you maul the past into your pattern and explain everything away and tell me how you came gradually to see we shouldn't be happy together and all the usual dirty, little lies. Tell yourself falsehoods if you like—you needn't waste time telling them to me. I'll tell you the truth; and that is that you're a low, mean coward and bully—a creature to sicken the air for any honest man or woman. And you know it behind your big talk. What did you do? You seduced me under promise of marriage, and when your brother heard what you'd done and flung you out of the Mill, you ran to your aunt. And she said, 'Choose between ruin and no money, and Sabina and money from me.' And so you agreed to marry me—to keep yourself in cash. And then, when all was changed and you found yourself a rich man, you lied again and deserted me, and wronged your child—ruined us both. That's what you did, and what you are."
"If you really believe that's the one and only version, I'm afraid we shan't come to an understanding," he said quietly. "You mustn't think so badly of me as that, Sabina."
"Your aunt does. That's how she sees it, being an honest woman."
"I must try to show you you're wrong—in time. For the moment I'm only concerned to do everything in my power to make your future secure and calm your mind."
"Are you? Then marry me. That's the only way you can make my future secure, and you well know it."
"I can't marry you. I shall never marry. I am very firmly convinced that to marry a woman is to do her a great injury nine times out of ten."
"Worse than seducing her and leaving her alone in the world with a bastard child, I suppose?"
"You're not alone in the world, and your child is my child, and I recognise the fullest obligations to you both."
"Liar! If you'd recognised your obligations, you wouldn't have let it come into the world nameless and fatherless."
She rose.
"You want everything your own way, and you think you can bend everything to your own way. But you'll not bend me no more. You've broke me, and you've broke your child. We're rubbish—rubbish on the world's rubbish heap—flung there by you. I, that was so proud of myself! We'll go to the grave shamed and outcast—failures for people to laugh at or preach over. Your child's doomed now. The State and the Church both turn their backs on such as him. You can't make him your lawful son now."
"I can do for him all any father can do for a son."
"You shall do nought for him! He's part of me—not you. If you hold back from me, you hold back from him. God's my judge he shan't receive a crust from your hands. You've given him enough. He's got you to thank for a ruined life. He shan't have anything more from you while I can stand between. Don't you trouble for him. You go on from strength to strength and the people will praise your hard work and your goodness to the workers—such a pattern master as you'll be."
"May time make you feel differently, Sabina," he answered. "I've deserved this—all of it. I'm quite ready to grant I've done wrong. But I'm not going to do more if I can help it. I want to be your friend in the highest and worthiest sense possible. I want to atone to you for the past, and I want to stand up for your child through thick and thin, and bear the reproach that he must be to me as long as I live. I've weighed all that. But power can challenge the indifference of the State and the cowardice of the Church. The dirty laws will be blotted out by public opinion some day. The child can grow up to be my son and heir, as he will be my first care and thought. Everything that is mine can be his and yours—"
"That's all one now," she said. "He touches nothing of yours while I touch nothing of yours. There's only one way to bring me and the child into your life, Raymond Ironsyde, and that's by marrying me. Without that we'll not acknowledge you. I'd rather go on the streets than do it. I'd rather tie a brick round your child's neck and drown him like an unwanted dog than let him have comfort from you. And God judge me if I'll depart from that if I live to be a hundred."
"You're being badly advised, Sabina. I never thought to hear you talk like this. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm here myself annoys you. Will you let my lawyer see you?"
"Marry me—marry me—you that loved me. All less than that is insult."
"We must leave it, then. Would you like me to see my child?"
"See him! Why? You'll never see him if I can help it. You'd blast his little, trusting eyes. But I won't drown him—you needn't fear that. I'll fight for him, and find friends for him. There's a few clean people left who won't make him suffer for your sins. He'll live to spit on your grave yet."
Then she left the room, and he got up and went from the house.