Volume Iii Part 3 (2/2)

”Don't you be afraid, ma'am. I'll go straight to the doctor; he sent me here, and he knows me, and I'll tell him exactly what it is, and he'll come first thing and see him.”

Margaret saw him go, with absolute despair. She had suffered very much lately; her baby who slept with her had been so fretful and so very sleepless.

The poor child herself had no experience, and the nurse she had was a young woman who was good-tempered and kind, but not skilful. For several nights the child had never slept except in Margaret's weary arms, as she walked up and down, and up and down with it. Each time she tried to lay it down it woke and cried, and, like all children accustomed to being much fondled and carried about by its mother, it disliked being handed over to the nurse when it was ill.

The want of sleep, the incessant terror she was in, all she went through with those terrible tireless eyes always upon her, everything combined to make her really ill.

The strain became intolerable, and Margaret recognised that something must be done--some one must interfere in her behalf and take her and her child away.

Only through her nurse could she hear of Grace. Jean went repeatedly to the house, and never succeeded in baffling Mr. Drayton's watchfulness.

Now the man-servant had gone he never opened the door, and the bells might ring all day long, he took no notice. More than once Margaret glided to the door trusting to give a message, to hear a voice she knew, only to feel a hard grip upon her shoulder, and to be thrust back.

The stone pa.s.sage between the gate and the house was too long for her to make herself heard. She could not understand why Grace sent no message and why no letters reached her--and only found out long afterwards that her cook, who not unnaturally found the place anything but what she liked, spent her time in going to London and looking for another situation, and never went near Grace at all.

It was as well that the poor thing did not know then what a broken reed she was trusting to.

She hoped much from the man's statement to the doctor, and as she walked up and down, and up and down through the long and weary night, she tried to think that soon this terrible state of matters would end for her and for her child.

From the nursery window she could look over the trees and shrubs, and over the high wall into the distance, and she envied the people going to and fro. She had committed no crime, and yet she was, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner. She had no society, no friends, no books; and when she made an effort over herself, and met her husband at the ill-served dinner--he never spoke to her; when she encountered him occasionally in the pa.s.sage--he was equally silent, but the fierce expression of his eyes terrified her, and she avoided those meetings, creeping back sometimes with a fear of him that increased daily.

The warmer weather now kept her almost all day in the garden, where Mr.

Drayton never cared to come, and where she felt free.

But each day increased her trouble now about her child. It lay feverish and breathless at times. If she roused it and tried to get it to play with her it cried, and at length even her experienced eyes saw that it was more than a pa.s.sing indisposition.

Alarmed, she rushed to her husband's sitting-room. He was sitting as usual near the window, and talking, she thought, to some one, but on going up to the window she found he was alone and talking to himself.

There was something so terrible to her in the imaginary conversation he was holding, that for one moment she drew back frightened, even more than usual, but her mother's love gave her courage and she went up to him.

”Baby is ill,” she said, very earnestly. ”Poor baby! I have no experience. Will you let me have the doctor?”

”No,” he answered, angrily. ”No; it is only a trick, you played me a trick the other day, and I allow no one to come here again. You are my wife and no one shall come to see you.”

”It is not to see me,” she said, trembling, trying to humour him, ”it is baby. Oh! you will let me send for the doctor?”

”No doctor or other man shall come here,” he said with fury; ”I know you now, you are full of tricks, and if a doctor came you would tell him.”

”I would tell him about my baby!” she cried. ”Oh, if ever you cared for me, if ever you loved me, you will let me see a doctor for my child!”

He watched her for a moment or two, with half-closed eyes, cunningly, triumphantly, and curiously, and then he pushed her out of the room.

She rushed to the front door and beat helplessly upon it with her hands, and he heard her, and came out and tried to stop her, on her way upstairs.

”If you try and leave the house I will lock you up,” he said, maliciously; ”and your pretty baby may cry its eyes out, but you shan't see it.”

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