Lucy went home still in the same strange excitement of mind. All had been executed that was in her programme. She had gone through it without flinching. The ball—that strange, frivolous-tragic effort of despair—it was over, thank heaven! and Bice had got full justice in her—was it in her—father's house? She could not have been introduced to greater advantage, Lucy thought, with a certain forlorn, simple pride, had she been Sir Tom's acknowledged daughter. Oh, not to so much advantage! for the Contessa, her guardian, her——was far more skilful than Lucy ever could have been. Bice had got her triumph; nothing had been neglected. And the other business was in train—the disposing of the money. She had made her wishes fully known, and even taken great trouble, calculating and transcribing to prevent any possibility of a mistake. And now, now the moment had come, the crisis of life when she must tell her husband what she had heard, and say to him that this existence could not go on any longer. A man could not have two lives. She did not mean to upbraid him. What good would it do to upbraid? none, none at all; that would not make things as they were again, or return to her him whom she had lost. She had not a word to say to him, except that it was impossible—that it could not go on any more.
To think that she should have this to say to him made everything dark about her as Lucy went home. She felt as if the world must come to an end to-night. All was straightforward, now that the need of self-restraint was over. She contemplated no delay or withdrawal from her position. She went in to accomplish this dark and miserable necessity like a martyr going to the cross. She would go and see baby first, who was his boy as well as hers. Sir Tom no doubt would be in his library, and would come out for luncheon after a while, but not until she had spoken. But first she would go, just for a little needful strength, and kiss her boy.
Fletcher met her at the head of the stairs.
"Oh, if you please, my lady—not to hurry you or frighten you—but nurse says please would you step in and look at baby."
Suddenly, in a moment, Lucy's whole being changed. She forgot everything. Her languor disappeared and her fatigue. She sprang up to where the woman was standing. "What is it? is he ill? Is it the old——" She hurried along towards the nursery as she spoke.
"No, my lady, nothing he has had before; but nurse thinks he looks—oh, my lady, there will be nothing to be frightened about—we have sent for the doctor."
Lucy was in the room where little Tom was, before Fletcher had finished what she was saying. The child was seated on his nurse's knee. His eyes were heavy, yet blazing with fever. He was plucking with his little hot hands at the woman's dress, flinging himself about her, from one arm, from one side to the other. When he saw his mother he stretched out towards her. Just eighteen months old; not able to express a thought; not much, you will say, perhaps, to change to a woman the aspect of heaven and earth. She took him into her arms without a word, and laid her cheek—which was so cool, fresh with the morning air, though her heart was so fevered and sick—against the little cheek, which burned and glowed. "What is it? Can you tell what it is?" she said in a whisper of awe. Was it God Himself who had stepped in—who had come to interfere?
Then the baby began to wail with that cry of inarticulate suffering which is the most pitiful of all the utterances of humanity. He could not tell what ailed him. He looked with his great dazed eyes pitifully from one to another as if asking them to help him.
"It is the fever, my lady," said the nurse. "We have sent for the doctor. It may not be a bad attack."
Lucy sat down, her limbs failing her, her heart failing her still more, her bonnet and out-door dress cumbering her movements, the child tossing and restless in her arms. This was not the form his ailments had ever taken before. "Do you know what is to be done? Tell me what to do for him," she said.