She was the woman whose husband was faithless and, in the horrible madness that gripped him, was coming to take her life. She was shut in, hidden in a poor shelter, miles away from human help; and she was listening for his step in terror, loving him so bitterly still that she would have been glad to die, but clinging desperately to life for the sake of his child. And she rocked the baby on her arm, half distracted; singing to it, ceasing her chant to listen ... and imagining his approach. But all the while, in her despair, she stifled the scream that was on her lips;—she must not waken the child.
Farther and farther she retreated, staring with frightened eyes at the door, but still hushing the baby at her breast; and then, all at once, she stopped, and bent her face to its cheek. A pause hung, significant; and then came her cry, dreadful, heart-breaking. The baby was still. He might come; he might kill her ... he could not waken the child....
"Good heavens, how real!" said Mr. Wickes.
Susan, breathing a little quicker, looked down on the dim-lit audience. All these women could ride, all these women could dance.... She wanted Barnaby to think of her sometimes, later. Would he remember her by the one thing they could not do? by that wild scrap of melodrama?
The room was shaking with an almost hysterical applause. Behind there was an enthusiastic stamping. And the only woman who was not crying was the baby's mother, who was too flattered, and one other who looked on with disdainful eyes.
"Did you like it?" asked the actress wistfully. It was Barnaby himself who had come forward to help her down. She could not hear what he said; it was under his breath, and it was drowned in the clapping.
The lights had gone up again; she could recognize the people who were surrounding her, as she stepped down amongst them. Near the wall, not very far from the Duchess, who was frankly borrowing a large, masculine handkerchief, were sitting a thin, fair woman, and a big, stupid, slow-witted man. They both had an odd look of having just found each other. The Duchess wagged her head at them.
"Yes," she whispered, "there they are. They have made it up.... Wickes, don't you think it would be a noble deed to invite the schoolmaster to play God Save the King? It will get his name into the local paper."
"Certainly," said Wickes. He took a long breath, conceiving his troubles over, remaining, however, with his eyes fixed on Susan in a kind of awed curiosity. Finally he spoke out the problem in his mind.
"Do you mind telling me," he said, apologetically, "what spell you used—how you contrived to keep the infant quiet?"