Mrs. Dorriman Volume Ii Part 15

Her letters to Grace, so scanty and so bare of any information, were now full of her infant, its progress, and its wonderful intelligence.

Mr. Drayton showed no feeling but that of jealousy in connection with it; but Margaret did not mind. It slept in her room, and she devoted herself to it.

Up to this time Mr. Drayton had never again given her cause for fearing him.

Even the experienced servant p.r.o.nounced him as well as any one, and he resumed his usual occupations.

One night Margaret was upstairs with her child--late.

There had been a thunder-storm, and the thunder was still growling in the distance. Rain came on, and as Margaret sat by her little one she felt only natural pity for any wayfarers on such a stormy night.

How it poured, and how dark the night was! She closed the shutters for fear of the baby's slumbers being disturbed by the loud splashing of the rain upon a lower roof of an outhouse, and was taking up her book again, when her husband walked into the room, looking perfectly wild, a paper in his hand. With great difficulty she got him to go downstairs with her, calling her nurse to go to the child.

Cautious, and seeing how frightfully excited he was, she sat down near the bell, and tried to speak to him quietly.

But she was frightened when she saw that the paper he held was the record of her opinion of his character, written in Germany--that she had meant to destroy, and had long forgotten.

"So, madam," her husband said furiously, "this is your candid opinion of me." He spoke in a tone of concentrated rage.

"It was written long ago," faltered Margaret.

"Oh, it was written long ago. Well, now I know your opinion of me I shall alter my conduct towards you--you sneaking...."

He came towards her. Margaret, frightened, rang the bell, and the sound was to her surprise repeated outside. There was a commotion in the hall.

Before she could speak Grace, wet, wearied, but with all her accustomed nonchalance, stepped into the room.

Before the sisters could clasp each other Mr. Drayton rushed between them furious. The sight of Grace, whom he hated, drove him to frenzy, and the servant entreated her to go, as he did his utmost to restrain him.

"Yes, you had better go, darling," sobbed Margaret.

"But you will not remain here, you will come too," pleaded Grace, panting.

"Oh, Grace, my child! I cannot leave it--I cannot risk moving it."

She wrote the doctor's address in pencil, and saw her sister go, resolved that she would go and see her the next morning.

"The doctor will help you, Grace, and if you get some nice rooms I will manage for you."

She saw the frail figure in the cab, and, struck by the forlornness of her departure, she sent a servant with her. Then she went up stairs, and carefully locking the door tried to face this new and terrible complication.

What was she to do?

For the first time now she was really frightened. Her husband's expression had been so full of malice. How could she go on living in this way?

She thought long and deeply about it, and resolved that next day she would take baby to see Grace, leave it with her, and go and consult some clever lawyer as to what was possible for her to do. In her ignorance and inexperience she thought that the fact of his drinking would free her. She had yet much to learn.

Next day Mr. Drayton was not out of his room, and the discreet man-servant advised her to make haste and go out before he was up.

"He has been very troublesome and violent," he said, "and you had better not see him. He's got a turn against you just now, and how he got anything completely pa.s.ses me. I have been watching him like a cat."

In a short time Margaret, with her nurse and baby, went off to see Grace, and much to her annoyance did not find her alone. Paul Lyons was there, full of sympathy, but sympathy expressed with very little tact; and while wishing to be a real friend--indeed, longing to hold that position--he wounded Margaret's pride by the way in which he allowed himself to speak to her of her husband.

She carried her point, however, and taking the train to London she went to a lawyer she had heard of, knowing no one herself. Her visit there was productive of no comfort to her.

Mr. Spratt was a busy man, and looked upon all feminine clients in the light of obstructions. This one was very pretty, but an obstructionist nevertheless.

"How can I serve you, madam?" were his first words, and Margaret did not quite know how to state her case.

She looked at him for some moments, and his patience, not very unnaturally, began to give way. He wore blue spectacles, a circ.u.mstance which reduced every one to the same hue as regarded complexion, which was at the same time a drawback and a safeguard. Impelled to speak by his evident impatience, Margaret asked him with a trembling voice, "If a man drinks, can a wife leave him?"

"By mutual consent. If he illtreats her she can perhaps do so--by arrangement. Madam," he said, softening a little--a very little--at the soft pleading tones of her voice, "all you say to me is confidential--state your own, and not an abstract case. Does your husband drink?"

"Yes," said poor Margaret.

"Does he illtreat you when he is drunk?"

"No," said the poor child, trembling--"he--he frightens me."

"Ah! you see the law recognizes cruelty, and another thing, as a cause for legal separation, or even a divorce, but the fact of a man's being a drunkard is not taken into account."

"Not taken into account?" said Margaret, repeating his words in strongest surprise.

"No. So little does this fact--a very terrible fact--tell against a man in the eyes of the law, that, though you are too young to have children, _supposing_ you had children, and that you left the father, the law gives the children to him and not to you--they remain with him, they do not go with you."

"G.o.d help me!" she murmured, fervently, her heart standing still in the great shock of this announcement. And if she had left him, as she had once thought of doing, her baby might have been kept from her.

"Then you cannot help me!"

"I am afraid not," he said, not unkindly; "the law as regards the rights of mothers is a little one-sided--a little unjust, I allow, but till they are altered----"

"Good-bye," said Margaret, seized now with a sort of terror, lest something should have happened to her infant during her absence--she felt so far from it, she must hurry back.

"Good-bye, madam," said the old lawyer, seeing before him somebody not usual in his experience. "If your husband ever strikes you we might have a case."

"And my baby!"

"Good gracious--a baby! You have an infant? you look so very young," he said, in a tone of apology. "Ah, well, you see, we need not go into that question just now."

She went downstairs utterly broken down. She had always clung to a belief that if things got very bad she would be able to go. She had had a sort of blind belief that the laws of her country--boasted of so often, and the outcome of so much intellect and ability--were there to fall back upon and to protect her.

She stopped to take breath and gather herself together for a moment, and she was just moving away from the door when some one pa.s.sed in a hansom,--in another moment he had pulled up short, jumped out, and dismissed the cabman. Then he was beside her, and in the moment of her deepest anguish Sir Albert Gerald stood beside her.

She was utterly miserable, too much crushed to feel surprised. He saw that she was quite unfit to be spoken to, that she had sustained some great shock, and he tried to think rapidly what was best for her.

"I wish to go back to my sister," she said at length in a low voice.

"Will you take me there?"

He called a cab and put her into it, and got in and told the man to drive to the station.