Wee Wifie Part 43

"I kept my promise," she replied, quietly; "the fretting and the mischief were done before. We will not talk about my illness; it is too bad even to think of it. Have you nothing else to say to me, Hugh?

do you not wish to see our boy?"

Hugh started, conscience-stricken--he had forgotten his child altogether; and then he laughed off his confusion.

"Our boy! what an important Wee Wifie. Yes, show him to me by all means. Do you mean you have got him under that shawl?"

"Yes; is he not good?" returned Fay, proudly; she had forgotten Hugh's coldness now, as she drew back the flimsy covering and showed him the tiny fair face within her arms. "There, is he not a beauty? Nurse says she has never seen a finer baby boy for his size. He is small now, but he will grow; he has such long feet and hands that, she a.s.sures me, he will be a tall man. Mrs. Heron says he is a thorough Redmond. Look at his hair like floss silk, only finer; and he has your forehead, dear, and your eyes. Oh, he will be just like his father, the darling!"

"Will he?" returned Hugh, dubiously, and he touched him rather awkwardly--he had never noticed a baby closely before, and he was not much impressed with his son's appearance; there was such a redness, he thought, and no features to be called features, and he had such a ridiculous b.u.t.ton of a mouth. "Do you really call him a fine baby, Fay?"

"Fine! I should think so; the smallness does not matter a bit. You will be a big man some time, my beauty, for you are the very image of your father."

"Heaven forbid!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hugh; he was quite appalled at the notion of any likeness between this absurd specimen of humanity and himself; but happily the little mother did not hear him, for she was adjusting the long robe to her liking.

"There, you must take him, Hugh; I want to see him once more in your arms--my two treasures together;" and she held the baby to him.

Hugh did not see how the weak arms trembled under their load, as he retreated a few steps in most genuine alarm.

"I take him! My dear, I never held a baby in my life; I should be afraid of dropping him; no, let him stop with his mother. Women understand these sort of things. There, now, I thought so, he is going to cry;" and Hugh's discomfited look was not lost on Fay, as the baby's shrill voice spoke well for his strength of lungs.

"Oh, hush, hush," she said, nearly crying herself, and rocking the baby to and fro feebly. "You spoke so loudly, Hugh, you frightened him; he never cries so when we are alone."

"You will be alone directly if you do not send him away," was her husband's impatient answer; "it is not pleasant for a man to be deafened when he is tired after a long journey. Why, I do believe you are going to cry too, Fay; what is the good of a nurse if you exhaust yourself like this?" And he pulled the bell-rope angrily.

"Oh, please don't send my baby away," she implored, in quite a piteous voice; "he is always with me now, and so good and quiet, only you startled him so."

"Nonsense," he returned, decidedly; "your illness has made you fanciful; surely I must know best what is good for my wife. Nurse, why do you allow Lady Redmond to wear herself out with a crying child? it can not be right in her weak state."

Fay gave up her baby without a word; she was too gentle to remonstrate, but if he could have read her thoughts. "He does not care for his child at all," she was saying bitterly to herself; and then she was very quiet, and shielded her face with one hand. Sir Hugh was rather uncomfortable; he knew he had been out of temper, and that he was disappointing Fay, but he never guessed the stab that he had inflicted when he had refused to take their boy in his arms.

"Well, Fay," he said, in rather a deprecating manner, "I meant to have had a little talk with you, now that noisy fellow is gone; but you seem sleepy, dear; shall I leave you to rest now, and come up again after dinner?"

Fay uncovered her eyes and looked at him rather oddly, he thought, but she made no answer. Hugh rose and looked at his watch, and repeated his question.

"No," she said, very slowly; "do not trouble to come up again, Hugh. I can not talk to you to-night; I shall be better quiet."

"There, I told you so," he cried, triumphantly. "I knew that little rascal had tired you."

"My baby never tires me," she answered, wearily, and closed her eyes.

Oh, if she could only close them forever! But then she remembered how terrible death had seemed to her in her illness--a pit of infinite pain.

Hugh looked at her a little puzzled; his Wee Wifie was very much altered, he thought; and then he kissed her two or three times with some affection, and went to his dressing-room.

But when she heard him go down-stairs she rang for the nurse to bring back her baby directly. The woman did not like her excited look, or the fierce way she almost s.n.a.t.c.hed him to her bosom.

"You had much better try and get a little sleep, my lady," she said, kindly; but Fay only shook her head. It was not bed-time yet, she said, but she would like to be quiet with her baby for a little. And when nurse had gone to have a chat with Janet, she tottered from the couch, and knelt down beside it, and laid her helpless arms about her baby's neck, and wetted the white robe with her tears.

"It is all over, baby," she moaned; "he does not care for you or for me either--he only wants Margaret; but you must love your mother, baby, and grow up and comfort her, for she has no one but you to love her in the whole wide world."

Lady Redmond had a serious relapse after this, and it was two or three weeks before she was carried to the couch again.

Hugh had not learned his lesson yet. Neither his wife's illness nor his own had taught him wisdom; he was as restless and unreasonable as ever.

He grew very impatient over Fay's prolonged weakness, which he insisted was due in a great measure to her own fault. If she had not excited herself so much on the night of his return, she would never have had that relapse. It was a very tiresome affair altogether; for his own health was not thoroughly re-established, and a London physician had recommended him a few months' travel; it was just what he wanted, and now his trip to Cairo and the Pyramids must be indefinitely postponed.

He rather obstinately chose to believe that there was a want of will in the matter, and that Fay could throw off her weakness if she liked.

Still he was very kind to her in his uncertain way--perhaps because the doctors said he must humor her, or she would fade away from them yet. So he told her that she would never get strong while she lay moping herself to death in that little painted bird-cage, as he called the blue room; And when she answered listlessly that she could not walk--which he was at first slow to believe--he used to carry her down to one of the sunniest rooms in the old Hall--into either the morning-room or library--and place her comfortably on her couch with her work and book before he started out for his ride.

It was a new thing to have those strong arms performing gentle offices for her. Fay used to thank him gratefully with one of her meek, beautiful looks, but she seldom said anything--his kindness had come too late to the poor child, who felt that her heart was slowly breaking with its hopeless love. For who would be content with the mirage when they are thirsting for the pure water? Or who would be satisfied with the meted grain and the measured ounce when they have given their all in all?

Those looks used to haunt Hugh as he rode through the Singleton lanes; he used to puzzle over them in an odd ruminative fashion.

He remembered once that he had been in at the death of a doe--where, or in what country he could not remember; but she had been overtaken with her fawn, and one of the huntsmen had dispatched her with his knife.

Hugh had stood by and shuddered at the dumb look of anguish in the wild deer-eyes, as with a sobbing breath the poor creature breathed its last, its helpless fawn licking its red wounds. Hugh had not been able to forget that look for a long time; and now it recurred to his memory, and he could not tell why Fay's eyes reminded him so much of the dying doe's--it was an absurd morbid idea. And then he touched his black mare a little smartly, and tried to efface the recollection by a rousing gallop. But, do what he would, he could not get it out of his mind that his Wee Wifie was sadly altered; she was not the same Fay whose little tripping feet had raced Nero and Pierre along the galleries with that ringing laugh. This was a tired Fay who rarely spoke and never laughed--who seemed to care for nothing but her baby.

Hugh used to tell her so sometimes, with an inexplicable feeling of jealousy that rather surprised him; but Fay did not understand him.

"What does it matter for whom I care?" she would say to herself. "I must love my own baby." And then she would think bitterly that Hugh seemed to like her better now that she had ceased to vex him with her childish demonstrations. "I am getting very dignified," she thought, "and very quiet; and I think this pleases him. Do old people feel like this, I wonder, when all their life is ended, and they have such feeble, aching limbs? Ah, no; I do not believe they suffer at all. But now I seem as though I can never rest for my longing that Hugh may love me, and tell me so before I die." And so she would press on in her sad plaintive little way.

No wonder Sir Hugh marveled at her, so silent of tongue, so grave of look--such an altered Wee Wifie; but all the conclusion at which he arrived was that the baby had been too much for her, and that, when the summer heat was over, she would grow strong again. And Fay never contradicted him.

And by and by, when the days grew a little cooler, Fay began to creep about the garden a little, and call herself well. Hugh drove her out once or twice in her pony-carriage; but she saw he did not like it, and begged him to let her go alone--such reluctant courtesies gave her no pleasure. But presently Erle came for a brief visit, and was her ready escort, and after that she really began to mend.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

FAY'S MISTAKE.

She loves with love that can not tire, And when, ah, woe! she loves alone Through pa.s.sionate duty love flames higher As gra.s.s grows taller round a stone.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

Never! 'tis certain that no hope is--none?

No hope for me, and yet for thee no fear, The hardest part of my hard task is done; Thy calm a.s.sures me that I am not dear.

JEAN INGELOW.

Erle was quite shocked at Fay's changed appearance, but he said very little about it. He had an instinctive feeling that the shadow had deepened, and that Fay was sick at heart; but he only showed his sympathy by an added kindness, and an almost reverential tenderness, and Fay was deeply grateful for his delicacy, for she knew now that, though she had been blind, others had had their eyes open; and she had a morbid fear that every one traced her husband's restlessness and dissatisfaction with his life to the right cause, and knew that she was an unloved wife. Fay was very proud by nature, though no one would have guessed it from her exceeding gentleness; and this knowledge added largely to her pain. But she hid it--she hid it heroically, and no one knew till too late how the young creature had suffered in her silence.

Erle and she were better friends than ever; but they did not resume their old confidential talks. Erle had grown strangely reticent about his own affairs, and spoke little of his _fiancee_ and his approaching marriage. He knew in his heart that Fay had read him truly, and knew that his warmest affections had been given to Fern, and he had an uneasy consciousness that she condemned his conduct.

Fay never told him so; she congratulated him very prettily, and made one of her old mischievous speeches about "the young lady with the go in her"--but somehow it seemed to fall flat; and she asked him a few questions, as in duty bound, about his prospects, and how often he saw Miss Selby, and if he would bring her down to Redmond Hall, one day; "for I mean to be very fond of your wife, Erle, whoever she may be,"

she continued; "and I hear from the Trelawneys that Miss Selby--but I must call her Evelyn now--is very nice indeed, and that you are to be congratulated."