“What hindered you coming to see me?” she asked. “What prevented you? If I had died, as seemed likely, it could have done you no harm in the world, for with me every hope of Uncle Robert’s money, which is what has been my destruction, would have fallen to the ground.”
“Lily, you never will understand! I did go to Kinloch-Rugas. I was once under your windows, but got no satisfaction. A man has to be silent and endure where a woman cries out. I did what I could to——”
“That is enough,” said Lily, waving her hand. “Between you and me there need be no more talking. I sent for you for one thing, to ask you one question—where is my baby? You took him out of my arms; bring him back again to me, and then there may be ground to speak.”
“He is my baby as well as yours, Lily. I have the responsibility of the family. I did what I felt to be best both for him and you.”
“What was best?” she cried. “Are you a god to judge what is best? But I will not argue with you. Give me my baby back! His mother’s arms—that is his natural place! Give me back my child, and then, perhaps, I may hear you speak.”
He had thought this matter over as he came along with the rapidity of highly stimulated thought, and a sudden great necessity for decision; he had thought of it often before, looking at the subject from every point of view. To give her back the baby was to ruin every thing for which he had fought. He had not deprived himself of the company of a wife he loved, he said to himself, for a small motive; not for nothing had he encountered all the difficulties of the position in the past, and all her reproaches, tacit and expressed. Her very look at him had often been very hard to bear, and yet he paused now before making his last stroke. Once more, like lightning, the question passed through his mind, what other way was there? Was there any other way in which her mind could be satisfied and her foolish search made an end of? Could he in any other way secure her return to her home, and the carrying out to the end of his scheme? But on the other hand would she ever forgive him for what he must now do? He had not more than a moment to carry on that controversy, to make his final decision. And she was looking at him all the time: Lily’s eyes, which so often had smiled upon him, so often followed him with tenderness and met him with the sudden flash of love and delight, were fixed upon him steadily now, shaded by curved brows, regarding him sternly without indulgence, without wavering or softening. He was no longer to Lily covered with the glamour of love. She saw him as he was, nay, worse than he was, with a look that took no account of his real feeling toward herself, or of what was in fact a perverted desire to do the best, as he saw it, for her as well as for himself. Would these eyes ever soften, whatever he might do or say? Would she ever forgive him even now?
“Lily,” he said with an effort, overcoming the dryness of his throat, trying still to gain a little time. “I am your husband, I am your natural head and guide; it is my part to judge what is wisest, what is the best thing for you. I am older than you, I am more experienced in the world. I know what can be done, and what cannot be done. Whatever you may wish and whatever you may say, it is for me to judge what is the best.”
It is not often that a woman hears an uncompromising statement of this kind with patience, and Lily was little likely to have done so in her natural condition of mind, but at present she had no thought but one. “I have told you,” she cried, “that you can speak after, and that I will hear. But in the meantime bring me back my little baby. I ask nothing but that, I’ve no mind for reasoning now. Give me back my baby, my little bairn; that’s all I am asking. My baby, my baby! Ronald, if ever in your life you had a kind thought of me, a thought that was not all interest and money, and for the love of God, if ever you knew that, give me back my baby! and then,” she cried with a gasp—“then we can talk!”
His mind was made up now; there was nothing else for it. His face assumed an air of the deepest gravity; that was not difficult, for, indeed, his situation was grave enough. He put out his hand and laid it upon hers for a moment. “Lily,” he said, “I’ve been endeavoring to put off this blow. It was perhaps foolish, but I thought you would feel it less were you kept in ignorance than if all your hopes were cut off. Fain, fain would I bring back your baby and lay him in your arms again! You think I am a harsh man with no softness for a mother and a child, but you are mistaken, Lily. All that I am worth in this world I would give to bring him back. But there is but one hand that could do that.”
She raised herself up with a start, flinging off his hand, which again had touched hers. “What do you mean? What do you mean?” she cried, with wild staring eyes, eyes that seemed to be bursting from her head. She had been leaning back on the hard sofa in her weakness. Now she sat upright, her hands raised before her as if to push off some dreadful fate.