The Regent Part 3

The one bright facet of the many-sided and gloomy crisis was the very obvious truth that Robert was the most extraordinary child that ever lived.

"But when on earth did you get at the _Encyclopaedia_, Robert?" his mother exclaimed, completely at a loss.

"It was before you came in from Hillport," the wondrous infant answered. "After my leg had stopped hurting me a bit."

"But when I came in nurse said it had only just happened!"

"Shows how much _she_ knew!" said Robert, with contempt.

"Does your leg hurt you now?" Edward Henry inquired.

"A bit. That's why I can't go to sleep, of course."

"Well, let's have a look at it." Edward Henry attempted jollity.

"Mother's wrapped it all up in boracic wool."

The bed-clothes were drawn down and the leg gradually revealed. And the sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really did touch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic father than he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt him. Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was not a large wound.

"It's a clean wound," he observed judiciously. In spite of himself he could not keep a certain flippant harsh quality out of his tone.

"Well, I've naturally washed it with carbolic," Nellie returned sharply.

He illogically resented this sharpness.

"Of course he was bitten through his stocking?"

"Of course," said Nellie, re-enveloping the wound hastily, as though Edward Henry was not worthy to regard it.

"Well, then, by the time they got through the stocking the animal's teeth couldn't be dirty. Everyone knows that."

Nellie shut her lips.

"Were you teasing Carlo?" Edward Henry demanded curtly of his son.

"I don't know."

Whenever anybody asked that child for a piece of information he almost invariably replied, "I don't know."

"How--you don't know? You must know whether you were teasing the dog or not!" Edward Henry was nettled.

The renewed spectacle of his own wound had predisposed Robert to feel a great and tearful sympathy for himself. His mouth now began to take strange shapes and to increase magically in area, and beads appeared in the corners of his large eyes.

"I--I was only measuring his tail by his hind leg," he blubbered and then sobbed.

Edward Henry did his best to save his dignity.

"Come, come!" he reasoned, less menacingly. "Boys who can read _Encyclopaedias_ mustn't be cry-babies. You'd no business measuring Carlo's tail by his hind leg. You ought to remember that that dog's older than you." And this remark, too, he thought rather funny, but apparently he was alone in his opinion.

Then he felt something against his calf. And it was Carlo's nose.

Carlo was a large, very s.h.a.ggy and unkempt Northern terrier, but owing to vagueness of his princ.i.p.al points, due doubtless to a vagueness in his immediate ancestry, it was impossible to decide whether he had come from the north or the south side of the Tweed. This ageing friend of Edward Henry's, surmising that something unusual was afoot in his house, and having entirely forgotten the trifling episode of the bite, had un.o.btrusively come to make inquiries.

"Poor old boy!" said Edward Henry, stooping to pat the dog. "Did they try to measure his tail with his hind leg?"

The gesture was partly instinctive, for he loved Carlo; but it also had its origin in sheer nervousness, in sheer ignorance of what was the best thing to do. However, he was at once aware that he had done the worst thing. Had not Nellie announced that the dog must be got rid of? And here he was fondly caressing the bloodthirsty dog! With a hysterical movement of the lower part of her leg Nellie pushed violently against the dog--she did not kick, but she nearly kicked--and Carlo, faintly howling a protest, fled.

Edward Henry was hurt. He escaped from between the beds and from that close, enervating domestic atmosphere where he was misunderstood by women and disdained by infants. He wanted fresh air; he wanted bars, whiskies, billiard-rooms and the society of masculine men-about-town.

The whole of his own world was against him.

As he pa.s.sed by his knitting mother she ignored him and moved not. She had a great gift of holding aloof from conjugal complications.

On the landing he decided that he would go out at once into the major world. Half-way down the stairs he saw his overcoat on the hall-stand beckoning to him and offering release.

Then he heard the bedroom door and his wife's footsteps.

"Edward Henry!"

"Well?"

He stopped and looked up inimically at her face, which overhung the banisters. It was the face of a woman outraged in her most profound feelings, but amazingly determined to be sweet.

"What do you think of it?"

"What do I think of what? The wound?"

"Yes."

"Why, it's simply nothing. Nothing at all. You know how that kid always heals up quick. You won't be able to find the wound in a day or two."

"Don't you think it ought to be cauterized at once?"

He moved on downwards.

"No, I don't. I've been bitten three times in my life by dogs. And I was never cauterized."

"Well, I _do_ think it ought to be cauterized." She raised her voice slightly as he retreated from her. "And I shall be glad if you'll call in at Dr. Stirling's and ask him to come round."

He made no reply, but put on his overcoat and his hat and took his stick. Glancing up the stairs he saw Nellie was now standing at the head of them, under the electric light there, and watching him. He knew that she thought he was cravenly obeying her command. She could have no idea that before she spoke to him he had already decided to put on his overcoat and hat and take his stick and go forth into the major world. However, that was no affair of his.

He hesitated a second. Then the nurse appeared out of the kitchen, with a squalling Maisie in her arms, and ran upstairs. Why Maisie was squalling, and why she should have been in the kitchen at such an hour instead of in bed, he could not guess. But he could guess that if he remained one second longer in that exasperating minor world he would begin to smash furniture. And so he quitted it.

V

It was raining slightly, but he dared not return to the house for his umbrella. In the haze and wet of the shivering October night the clock of Bleakridge Church glowed like a fiery disc suspended in the sky, and, mysteriously hanging there, without visible means of support, it seemed to him somehow to symbolize the enigma of the universe and intensify his inward gloom. Never before had he had such feelings to such a degree. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that never before had the enigma of the universe occurred to him. The side gates clicked as he stood hesitant under the shelter of the wall, and a figure emerged from his domain. It was Bellfield, the new chauffeur, going across to his home in the little square in front of the church.

Bellfield touched his cap with an eager and willing hand, as new chauffeurs will.