Part 35 (2/2)

Each thought the other looking faded, worn, altered; each wondered where had lain the attraction, once so fatally powerful; each, I think, was resolved at heart this interview should be the last.

”How's the boy?” said Picard, glancing round the room in search of his child.

For answer, she opened a door into the adjoining apartment, signing to him, wearily and sadly, to go in.

On a neat, snowy little bed, drawn near the open window, lay the child, wan, wasted, scarcely conscious; his large eyes wandering vaguely here and there, his small, fragile hands limp and helpless on the counterpane. He gave his mother a feeble glance of recognition; but of the other visitor he took no notice whatever.

Picard's mouth was dry, and a knot seemed to rise in his throat.

”How's this?” he muttered, in a fierce, husky voice, trying to keep down his tears by making himself angry. ”The child is fearfully ill! It is too bad! I ought never to have trusted you with him! I should have thought his mother would have taken better care!”

The taunt was unfelt, unheeded. She showed no displeasure; but turned her large eyes on him with a plaintive, solemn sadness that spoke volumes, that told of dreary, waking nights, of anxious, sorrowing days, of cruel alternations between hope and despair, of piteous, calm resignation, that comes only when the last chance has faded gradually away. Picard went to the window, and looked out. A harder-hearted man probably did not walk the streets of London that day; but the one thing on earth he cared for was his child, and he saw the humble, dirty little street through a mist of tears.

”It is the only link between us _now_,” said Jin, in a measured, mournful voice. ”If it should part, G.o.d help us both! I do believe you care for that poor, pale, suffering darling. For _his_ sake, let us forgive one another!”

He was touched, penitent, and for the moment a better man.

”Virginie,” he said, ”I have deceived you--doubly deceived you! Our marriage was valid enough.”

Her heart sank within her.

”Then I am really your wife?” she faltered; but glancing at the boy, added bravely, ”I will try to be a good one from this day forth.”

A man's whole nature is not to be changed by a few tears and a minute's emotion. Das.h.i.+ng his hand across his eyes, Picard reviewed the position, and was his own bad self again. Less than ever would it suit him now to be hampered with the inc.u.mbrance of a family. He could scarce keep his head above water. To provide for mother and child would swamp him completely. While doing ample justice to his wife's sense of duty, he resolved by no means to imitate her; and with an a.s.sumption of great frankness, thus delivered himself:

”Your resolution is most creditable, Virginie, and I know to-day that I have never done you justice. But I have met lately with reverses, misfortunes, and at present it is impossible to make any arrangement by which you and I can be together as much as I might wish.”

An expression of intense relief came over her weary face, yet she drew near the child's bed, suspiciously, instinctively, like an animal protecting its young.

He observed and understood the action.

”Our poor boy cannot be moved,” said he. ”You will be a good mother, Virginie, if I leave him to you? Perhaps I may never see him again.”

Once more he betrayed real emotion; while Jin, from an impulse she could neither resist nor explain, raised the feeble little form on its bed, and supported the wan brow to which Picard's lips clung in a long farewell kiss. He would have blessed the child had he dared; but with the half-formed prayer came a sense of shameful unworthiness and a bitter hopeless remorse that he had been so bad a man.

In true womanly unselfishness, and with a certain readiness of immediate resource peculiar to her s.e.x, Jin made a mental calculation of her humble little store, reserving the small sum she thought would suffice till her boy's recovery, and offered the remainder ungrudgingly to her husband.

No doubt his excuses to himself were valid and unanswerable. He accepted it without hesitation, accepted, though he must have known it had been given her by another, and was all she had in the world.

To Jin, it seemed as if she had thus bought back the unquestioned possession of her child.

He wished her good-bye calmly and kindly enough, resolving, no doubt, that they should never meet on earth again; but, bad as he was, he cut a lock off that cl.u.s.ter of black curls tumbled on the pillow, and many a day afterwards would he take it out of his pocket-book to look on it for minutes at a time, with sad, repentant longing, that yet produced no good result. Sentiment is not affection. There may be much romance, with very little attachment; and many a man believes he is extremely fond of a woman or a child, for whom he will not sacrifice a momentary gratification or an hour's amus.e.m.e.nt.

When Picard went his way, Jin clasped the boy in her arms, as if he had just been rescued from some imminent danger; nor could all Kate Cremorne's persuasions, calling an hour afterwards in the pony-carriage, induce her to leave him during the rest of the afternoon.

It was for no want of nursing, from no lack of care and culture, that this poor little flower faded and withered away.

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