Part 22 (1/2)

Clarice reached the foot of the stairs without heeding a word he said.

But other hands, as tender as her own, were there before her.

”Little Rosie! my poor little child!” came from Earl Edmund's gentle lips, as he lifted the bruised child in his arms. Tenderly as it was done, Rosie could not repress a moan of pain which went to the two hearts that loved her.

She was not killed, but she was dying.

”A few hours,” said the Earl's physician, instantly summoned, ”a few hours. There was nothing to be done. She would very likely not suffer much--would hardly be conscious of pain until the end came.”

The Earl bore her into his own chamber, and laid her on his bed. With speechless agony Clarice watched beside her.

Just once Rosie spoke.

”Mother, Mother, don't cry!”

Clarice was shedding no tears; they would not come yet; but in Rosie's eyes her strained white face was an equivalent.

”Mother, don't cry,” said Rosie. ”You said--I asked you--why people died. You said our Lord called them. Must go--when our Lord calls.”

Clarice was not able to answer; but Rosie's words struck cold to her heart.

”Must go when our Lord calls!”

She could hardly pray. What went up was not prayer, but rather a wild, pa.s.sionate cry that this thing could not be--should not be.

There were those few hours of half-consciousness, and then, just at the turn of the night, the Lord came and called, and Rosie heard His voice, and went to Him.

Sir Vivian Barkeworth, during that day and night, was not pursuing the even tenor of his way in that state of complacent self-approval which was the usual att.i.tude of his mind. It was not that he mourned the child; his affections were at all times of a microscopic character, and the only spark of regard which he entertained for Rosie was not as his little child, but as his future heiress. Nor was he at all troubled by the sufferings of Clarice. Women were always crying about something; they were decided hindrances and vexations in a man's way; in fact, the existence of women at all, except to see to a man's comforts, and amuse his leisure, was, in Sir Vivian's eyes, an unfortunate mistake in the arrangements of Providence. He mourned first the good opinion which people had of him, and which, by the way, was a much smaller package than Sir Vivian thought it; and secondly, the far more important disturbance of the excellent opinion which he had of himself. He could not rid himself of the unpleasant conviction that a little more patience and amiability on his part would have prevented all this disagreeable affair, though he would not for the world have acknowledged this conviction to Clarice. That was what he thought it--a disagreeable affair. It was the purest accident, he said to himself, and might have happened to any one. At the same time, something, which did not often trouble Vivian, deep down in his inner man, distinctly told him that such an accident would never have happened to the Earl or Sir Ademar.

Vivian only growled at his conscience when it gave him that faint p.r.i.c.k.

He was so accustomed to bid it be quiet, that it had almost ceased to give him any hints, and the p.r.i.c.king was very slight.

”A disagreeable business!” he said, inwardly; ”a most disagreeable business. Why did not Clarice attend to her duties better? It was her duty to keep that child from bothering me. What are women good for but to keep their children out of mischief, and to see that their husbands'

paths through life are free from every thorn and pebble?”

Sir Vivian had reached this point when one of the Earl's pages brought him a message. His master wished his attendance in his private sitting-room. Vivian inwardly anathematised the Earl, the page, Heliet (as a witness), Rosie (as the offender), but above all, as the head and front of all his misery, Clarice. He was not the less disposed to anathemas when he found Sir Ademar, Heliet, Clarice, and Master Franco, the physician, a.s.sembled to receive him with the Earl. It rasped him further to perceive that they were all exceedingly grave, though how he could have expected any of them to look hilarious it would be difficult to say. Especially he resented the look of desolate despair in Clarice's eyes, and the physical exhaustion and mental agony written in every line of her white face. He would not have liked to admit that he felt them all as so many trumpet-tongued accusers against him.

”I desired you all to a.s.semble,” said the Earl, in tones as gentle as usual, but with an under-current of pain, ”because I wish to inquire in what manner our poor little darling met her death. How came she to fall down the staircase?”

He looked at Heliet, and she was the one to reply.

”It was an accident, my Lord, I think,” she said.

”'You think?' Is there some doubt, then?”

No one answered him but Ademar. ”Pardon me, my Lord; I was not present.”

”Then I ask one who was present. Dame Heliet?”

”I hope there is no doubt, my Lord,” answered Heliet. ”I should be sorry to think so.”