“Matter is eternal,” he reflected, “always changing, but reproduced and eternal. May not mind be also? Is its inner spark celestial? Or, like the cells that produce it, is it a creature of the mold, doomed to extinction with the brain, sinking as the candle-flame perishes when the wick falls? I remember when I viewed the planets through Herschel’s telescope and saw all at once that they were worlds. What has eternity to do with the congregated cosmic dust we call mankind? What are our little passions and resentments before the least of those stars?”
His gaze and his thought fell from the sky.
Had he any right to the stubborn pride which would not bemean itself by self-defense? Would his own silence not abet the calculating hatred of Lady Noël’s and add to that monstrous estrangement that was steadily carrying his soul further and further from the soul of Annabel? The question of whether his wife believed or disbelieved aside, was he justified in such a course now? A softer feeling took possession of him. Appearances had been against him. To speak could make the matter no worse for Lady Caroline. He would go to Annabel and assure her of the truth. Perhaps even out of such a catastrophe as to-night’s might arise a truer and a nearer confidence.
He threw off his great-coat in the empty hall and ascended the stair. The door of the chamber where sat the little white bed was open. He went in. The lamp still shed its radiance on the pillow, but the tiny fragrant mould where a baby head had lain, now held only a note, bearing Gordon’s name.
With a puzzled look he tore it open.
A white anguish spread over his features. A cry broke from his lips. He flung wide the door of his wife’s room—it was empty. He ran down the stair, where the footman met him, turning a wondering face to his question.
“My lady went out with Lady Noël, my lord,” Rushton answered, “and took the baby with her. Sir Ralph came for them a half-hour ago. Here is a letter he left for your lordship.”
Gordon took it mechanically and read the few curt lines that burned into his sight like points of pain. It was the end, then! Annabel had gone, not to return—gone with only a hastily pencilled note for farewell, laid with refinement of cruelty on his baby’s pillow! That, and these blunt, peremptory lines of her father’s menace!
He found himself at length in the library, feeling his way blindly to his chair. What to do? Could there be reconciliation? Could she, with her cold prudent resolve, her fixed principles squared mathematically, her starched life which counted even forgiveness a Christ-like sin, retract a step of such moment? He told himself it was not to be hoped for; her pride would make her decision irrevocable.
What then? To pursue? Invoke the law to restore his child? Plunge into publicity to set right his own name? When had he cared for reputation in the world’s eyes! Dare her father’s threat? Drag his wife’s name and his own in the dust and infamy of the courts, and bare the festering sore of his heart to the world? Dare it, and shut the gate of society on another woman, too, whose punishment already would be more than she could bear? Most of all, cloud his daughter’s young years with a lasting stain?