He pulled up the blind for want of anything else to do, and the dawn struggled in and took away the brightness of the lamp.
It was only this minute he had really meant to keep the child, his first idea had been merely to go away and leave them, not [p 120] ]altogether, perhaps as he said, but until he could find life bearable again.
But when he saw how quickly she consented and how her only care was to keep the child, he told himself he would move heaven and hell before she had it.
‘I shall keep it,’ he repeated, ‘it is not a question of a mother’s care, any nurse I get will know more about it than you do—I shall keep it. You have chosen your life, you can go on the stage altogether if you like, but I shall not let you have the child.’
In all he said he would not degrade either of them by the mention of Wooster’s name, but there was nothing else in his thoughts, and only everything else in the world in hers.
A great weariness came to Dot, a weariness of all her present life. She dropped her chin on her hands, and stared out at the pale, creeping light. Her heart was quite cold, she did not seem to care about anything in the world. She looked at Larrie and away again. A tiny darn on her skirt caught her eye and she stared at it fixedly.
[p 121]
]It lifted all her tired thoughts back to the day it was made and pushed the present out of sight. It was her wedding morning, and she had put on the dress, she remembered she had said it was a ‘holy’ dress, it was so purely white and billowy and beautiful.
And she had dressed very early, for Larrie had been unorthodox enough to want to see her before she came up the aisle to him. And when she saw him coming up the path, looking oddly uncomfortable in his tall new hat and frock coat, she had flown down the hall and into his arms. And at the same minute the gate had clicked to admit a string of relations eager to fall on the bride, and he had picked her up in his arms, sweeping train and veil and all, and whisked her upstairs on to the landing to have her to himself for the last few minutes before he had her for ever. The darn had been necessary, because in the quick passage up a fold had caught in a splinter in the bannisters, made by her travelling trunk.
To-night she saw Larrie looking at the [p 122] ]mud on the hem. She imagined herself without the darn, without the dress, without the wedding.
It was eighteen months out of her life, that was all; all the wish she had on earth just now was to wipe out that time and be a girl again.