'Of—of course no one is up yet?' he says, with an air that he, as he feels, in vain tries to make easy and disengaged.
'Oh yes, sir; her ladyship is up! Her ladyship has been up all night.'
Up all night! Then some one must be ill! Is it Harborough? Harborough ill? Will he die? In one thought-flash these questions, with all that for him and his future life an answer in the affirmative would imply, dart through his mind—dart with such a sickening dread that he can scarcely frame his next and most obvious question.
'Is any one ill, then?'
For the first time the servant looks a little surprised. If it is not on account of the illness in the house why has Mr. Talbot presented himself at this extraordinary hour?
'Yes, sir; Master Harborough has been very ill for two days. Sir Andrew Clark and Dr. Ridge Jones came down yesterday to see him, and he was hardly expected to live through the night.'
Master Harborough! Not expected to live through the night! At this news, so entirely unlooked for—since, amongst all the possibilities whose faces he has been scanning, that of something having happened to the children has never once presented itself—Talbot stands stock-still, rooted to the spot, in sad amazement. Poor little Master Harborough! In a moment he is seeing him again as he had last seen him—seen the little sturdy figure that, in its rosy vigour, seemed to be shaking its small fist in defiance at age, or decay, or death. Yes; he sees him again—sees, too, his mother, laughing at his naughtiness, bragging of his strength, smothering him with her kisses. Poor, poor Betty! A great rush of compassionate tenderness floods his heart towards the woman against whom he had just been harshly shutting that heart's doors; discrediting her truth; grudging the service she has asked of him; crediting her even in his thoughts with the indecency of summoning him to her husband's death-bed. Oh, poor Betty! On his heart's knees he begs her pardon.
His agitation is so great and so overcoming that, for the moment, he can ask no more questions, but only follows the butler, who by this time has appeared on the scene, in silent compliance with his request to him to come upstairs—a request accompanied by the remark that he will let her ladyship know that he is here. Having led him to Betty's boudoir, the servant leaves him to look round, with what heart he may, on all the objects of that most familiar scene. How familiar they are—all her toys and gewgaws! Many he himself has given her; some they had chosen together; over others they had quarrelled; over others, again, they had made up—but how well he knows them, one and all! He looks round on them with a triple sorrow—the sorrow of his past love and present pity for her joining hands, in melancholy triad, with his deep and abiding self-contempt. He looks round on the countless fans—fans everywhere—open, half-open; on the great Japanese umbrella, stuck up, in compliance with one of the most senseless fashions ever introduced, in the middle of the room, with Liberty silk handkerchiefs meaninglessly draped about its stem; on the jumping frogs and mechanical mice; on the banjo she has often thrummed to him; on the mandoline she has tried to wheedle him into learning to play, that he may sing her Creole love-songs to it.
He turns away from them all with a sick impatient sigh. How hideously out of tune they and all the fooleries they recall seem with this soul-and-body-biting December dawning—with 'Master Harborough not expected to live through the night!'
He has never seen Betty in the grasp of a great grief. He is as much at a loss to picture how she will bear it as he would be to fancy a butterfly drawing a load of coals. How will she take it? How will she look? What shall he say? How shall he comfort her? That she has had any other motive in sending for him than the child's impulse to show the cut finger or the barked shin to a friend never occurs to him. His poor Betty! No selfish regret enters his mind at having been summoned through the midwinter night helplessly to see a little child die. He can think of nothing but how best to console her. He is very far from being ready with any consolations that even to himself appear at all consoling, when the door opens, and she enters.