[p 147]
CHAPTER XIV
THE WHEEL IN THE BRAIN

It was half-an-hour before Larrie came back and found the tossed, empty cot. He strode out of the house again, and up the hill in a fury of passion.

Out of the train into which he had seen his friends, Wooster had stepped and gone at quick speed, straight up the road leading to the house. Larrie was not to know it was intended for the last visit of a lifetime. He resisted the inclination to follow and slay him outright, and went home instead—to find Dot had been there and taken away the child.

[p 148]
A second jealousy sprang up in his heart, jealousy of his own little baby son. He could imagine the pass to which Dot had come, imagine the heart hungerness that had prompted this. But it was all for the child—none of the aching and longing had been for himself. The front door of the house was open, he went straight through the hall and upstairs two steps at a time to the sitting-room.

Dot was sitting rocking alone in the firelight; the little mother had gone to a sudden case of illness in a cottage near, and Wooster had taken her.

The child’s little soft head lay against her breast, she held both its bare little feet in her hand. There were tear-wet places on her cheeks, and the eyes that looked down on the child were full of tenderness, but her lips were rather tightly closed. She could not forget the verandah, and Larrie’s burst of laughter.

He strode across the room.

‘Give me the child,’ he said.

Her arms closed tightly round it.

[p 149]
‘He is mine, mine,’ she said.

‘Give him to me,’ he cried again.

She sprang to the door her eyes gleaming, her hands holding the little soft body with desperate firmness. But he was before her, he looked down at her with white face, and eyes blazing with scorn.

‘You are not fit to hold him,’ he said.

She was moving across to the second door clasping her burden convulsively.

‘I will die before you shall have him,’ she said passionately.

‘No you will not,’ he said.

His words came slowly, there was a horrible note in his voice, ‘There is—your lover, you know.’

She turned and looked at him, incredulous horror in her wide eyes, her arms loosened their hold a little, she went a step towards him. But the light of madness in his eyes increased, he tore the child from her arms, and carried it away with him out into the night.

·   ·   ·   ·   ·

[p 150]
He went slowly down the hill he had come up in such wild haste. He had not felt the night wind before, but now it blew chillily on his burning forehead and quietened the fever in his blood. He took off his coat and wrapped it round the child, which lay warm and sleepy and quiet against his shoulder all the way.

There had seemed to be a strange wheel working in his brain lately, it had gone at a maddening rate during his short interview with Dot. But something in the great hush of the grey-blue night stopped it for a time and a sudden calmness and power of reasoning came to him once more.

When he reached the cottage he put the child down again in the cot and covered it up warmly. Then he walked about staring at his misery. He knew it had grown utterly past bearing. Everything in the place spoke of Dot, spoke loudly and insistently, the silent piano, the dead flowers in the vases, the foolish little red watering pot on the verandah nail, the small garden boots in the [p 151] hall corner with the red clay of the roads dried on the heels. When he poured out his coffee at breakfast time he shuddered because he saw beside him the little dear bright face that was not there—when he helped himself to an egg he could not eat it, because the stand held only two, instead of the by custom sacred three.

That was the warm old jacket on the second hall peg that she always slipped on, to sit outside with him for his smoke, the big poppy trimmed hat beside it, still kept the shape of her head in its crown. He could not get away from it all. His eyes too refused to give up the picture of her they had seen to-night, the tender innocent face, the pure eyes, the trembling lips. Half-past ten brought the very end of his endurance, his bitterness and his unbelief.

It had taken all these six days for his brain to grow clear and healthy again; with the lifting of the strange cloud came the sudden horror of the thing he had done, a shame at the shame he had heaped on her. He found [p 152] responsibilities that were his, he remembered the tenderness and watchfulness and love which her eighteen years demanded, he saw with lightning clearness that it had been sheer insanity that had distorted a simple friendship and shamed them both.

He took up his hat to go out again. He would go and beseech her forgiveness though he told himself of course, she could not possibly give it. Still he would entreat her.

Then the strange wheel began again in his head, and as he walked a new hot swinging sensation there, made him almost unconscious of what was going on for minutes together. He took off his hat and went on blindly, there were two shrinking figures in the shadow by the fence but he did not heed them.

He knew quite well now what was going to happen to him, he was getting that same brain fever again, he had had two years ago; it accounted for everything.

He found a strange comfort in the knowledge. He was going to Dot—by the time he got to the lights and voices of the house he [p 153] knew his senses would have gone and his illness come upon him, his danger would touch her little tender heart and she would forgive. He even saw a vision of his convalescence and white beautiful days beyond.

Then he came to the lights and people of the house, and before the little mother could speak a word, the danger came upon him and the need of forgiveness.

[p 154]
CHAPTER XV
SULLIVAN WOOSTER, GENTLEMAN

Dot felt the emptiness of her arms. Then she remembered the bitterness and horror of her humiliation.

To nearly all human beings there come during the course of life some moments of complete madness and irresponsibility—Dot’s came upon her now.

She was on her knees by the window; sometimes she beat her head against the wood-work—wild tears were coursing down her cheeks, sobs of impotent anger choked her.

[p 155]
Wooster came up the staircase alone, the little mother had sent him to say good-bye, and to tell Dot she could not leave the sick woman for an hour. The sitting room door was open.

‘Great heavens!’ he said, and sprang to her side in alarm, ‘you are ill—God!—what is the matter with you?’

Her sobs ceased, she turned her head and regarded him strangely, her eyes wet and brilliant seemed to pierce him. Then she laughed the most terrible little laugh in the world. ‘Why, you do love me after all!’ she said.

He fell back against the wall, utterly undone, his eyes seemed the only living part of him.

‘I didn’t believe him,’ she continued in the same tone.

‘Who?’ his lips said, after a long pause.

‘Larrie.’

‘My God!’ he cried.

He could hardly breathe, the figure kneeling by the window was only a confused blur to him.

[p 156]
The choking sobs began again.

He walked up and down, wildly.

‘Where is your child?’ he said, stopping at the end of the room.

She sobbed, and laughed and choked.

‘He took it, he has taken everything, and isn’t it queer, I don’t care in the very least?’

He stayed at the end of the room, the table and several chairs between them.

‘He thinks I love you?’ he said.

‘Oh yes.’

She began to beat her head again.

‘Stop—how can you—for God’s sake, stop!’ he was at her side, trying to draw her from the cruel wood.

‘I believe you love me as much as he did at first,’ she said—he was offering her a handkerchief for the little bleeding wound on her head, and had to look at her—‘Don’t you?’

‘My God, no,’ he burst out, ‘what are you dreaming of?’

‘Oh, but you do,’ she cried, and laughed again.

He had moved her from the wall and she [p 157] could not beat her head. She got up from her knees, and went nearer to him.

‘I wish you would take me away,’ she said.

‘Remember you have a husband,’ he answered, very coldly.

There was a scarlet colour on her cheeks, a very fire in her eyes.

‘No, I have not, he has cast me off, I have no one, no one, oh, you might take me away,’ her voice broke into a cry.

‘Where?’ he said, and trembled violently.

‘Anywhere, anywhere, just so I can never, never see him again as long as I live.’

He moved towards her, all his strength had gone, he was shaking like a leaf. A minute ago he had been one of the best men on God’s earth. Now, the suddenness and awfulness of the temptation swept everything away for the time but overmastering love for this woman. He put out his hand.

‘Come,’ he whispered.

Two minutes later they were fleeing together down the long Red Road that Larrie was coming up.

[p 158]
They passed him half way, he was carrying his hat, and going straight forward, not looking to right or left.

The meeting only added fuel to Dot’s fire.

‘Hurry,’ she cried, pressing on breathlessly, ‘hurry.’

When they neared the cottage she was limping wretchedly. He stopped suddenly and looked down at her little house shoes.

‘The heel has come off,’ she said dismayedly.

It was really a catastrophe, for they were to have gone two miles further, and then tried to get a conveyance of some sort.

‘Perhaps I could walk without them,’ she said, and slipped one off, ‘Oh, do come on.’

There was a light burning in the dining-room window of the cottage.

‘Couldn’t you go in and get a pair?’ he asked, but she shuddered and shook her head.

‘I am afraid,’ she said—‘of Peggie.’

‘Sit down here then,’ he said, and found her a seat on some piled wood by the roadside. ‘I will try to take the other heel off.’

[p 159]
Dot smothered an exclamation.

Peggie herself was leaning over the little side gate fifty yards away, and the figure of the district butcher was discernible on the footpath.

‘You could go in yourself,’ he whispered, ‘and get wraps as well.’

‘I am afraid,’ she said again, and looked at the lamplight with strange eyes. ‘There’s a pair in the hall stand box.’

He opened the gate very quietly and went over the grass; she saw him push open the half closed front door, and go into the hall.

Peggie’s voice came over the garden beds.

‘Get out with you,’ she was saying to her lover. Dot watched her with frightened eyes, for no quick shadow fell on the lighted patch near the door.

How long he was! Perhaps he could not find the shoes, perhaps Larrie had flung them out. It might be he was looking for another wrap for her.

‘Ga’rn,’ said Peggie, ‘I’m goin’ in.’

But Dot trembled needlessly, she did not [p 160] move. The frilled curtain blew through the drawing-room window in its old accustomed way; the broken wistaria lattice swayed and creaked as it had done for months. Something rose in Dot’s throat, the wildness died out of her eyes.

Then the long shadow fell on the lighted patch, and he came across the grass again, straight over the mignonette bed and Larrie’s primroses.

She shivered violently, a sick feeling of fear came over her. He was speaking to her, bending down to her, she could not see his face in the darkness, but she knew he was holding something in his arms. He put it gently down on her knees. How warm it was, how soft, how very small! Such a little pitiful cry of broken sleep it gave!

‘Oh, God bless you!’ she said, ‘God bless you!’ There came a rush of warm, relieving, grateful tears.

‘Oh, God bless you!’ she said again. But he had gone.

THE END