The Vanity Girl Part 32

She laughed again.

"Tony, you haven't yet heard his name. I've chosen Lucius."

"That's a rum name. Why Latin all of a sudden? Or if Latin, why not Marcus Antoninus, don't you know?"

"It's a name I like very much."

He looked at her suspiciously.

"Who did you know called Lucius?"

"n.o.body. It's a name I like. That's all."

"You promise me you never knew anybody called Lucius?" He had caught her hand.

"Never."

"All right. You can have it."

But the nimbus round her motherhood was for the husband melted by the breath of jealousy. Let children come to interrupt their love, she would be his again soon; and what trumpery she made of those women with whom he had played in London as a lonely child plays with dolls.

Dorothy's confinement was expected about the middle of June. When the nurse arrived, for the first time in all these months she began to have fears. She never doubted that the baby would be a boy; but she had dark fancies of monstrosity and madness, and the nurse had all she could do to rea.s.sure her. The weather during the first week of the month was damp and gusty; after that gilded May-time it seemed worse than it really was. The rustling of the vexed foliage held a menace that the sharp whistle of the winter gales had lacked. However, by the middle of the month the weather had changed for the better, and the last day was perfect.

When Dorothy's travail began in the afternoon, the nurse asked for the mowing of the lawns to be stopped, because she thought the noise would irritate her patient. Dorothy, however, told her that she liked the noise; in the comparatively long intervals between the first pains the mower consoled her with its pretense of mowing away the minutes and thus of audibly bringing the time of her achievement nearer.

The car was sent off to Exeter for another doctor, notwithstanding Dorothy's wish that n.o.body except Doctor Lane should attend her. The old gentleman had much endeared himself by his lessons in natural history, and that he should crown his teaching by a practical demonstration of his knowledge struck her as singularly appropriate. Doctor Lane himself expressed great anxiety for a.s.sistance, because it looked as if the confinement was going to be long and difficult. So hard was her labor, indeed, that when the Exeter doctor arrived it was decided to give her chloroform.

"Nothing's the matter, is it?" she murmured, perceiving that preparations were going on round her. "Why doesn't he come? Nurse," she called, "if babies take a long time, it means usually that the head is very large, doesn't it?"

"Very often, my lady, yes. Oh yes, it does mean that very often. Try and lie a little bit easier, dear. That's right."

"I think I'm rather glad," said Dorothy, painfully. "Lord Salisbury had an enormous head."

"Fever?" whispered Doctor Lane, in apprehensively questioning tones.

"Tut, tut!"

Dorothy tried to smile at the silly old thing; but the pain was too much for smiles.

There was another long consultation, and presently she heard Lord Clarehaven being sent for.

"What's the matter?" she asked, sharply. "I'm not going to die, am I? I won't. I won't. He mustn't be brought up by anybody else."

The nurse patted her hand. Outside some argument was going on, rising and falling like the lawn-mower.

"A pity it's so dark," Dorothy murmured. "The mower had stopped, and I liked the humming. All that talking in the corridor isn't so restful.

What's the time?"

"About half past ten, my lady."

A mighty pain racked her, a rending pain that seemed to leave her with reluctance as if it had failed to hurt her enough. Her whole body s.h.i.+vered when the pain pa.s.sed on, and she had a feeling that it was a personality, so complete was it, a personality that was only waiting in a corner of the room and gathering new strength to rend her again.

Delirium touched her with hot fingers. It seemed that her body was like the small triangle of uncut corn round which the reaper relentlessly hums. It was coming again; it would tear the fibers of her again; it was coming; the humming was nearer every moment. In an effort to check the incommunicable experiences of fever, she asked if it was not the lawn-mower that was humming.

"No, dear, it's the doctors talking to his lords.h.i.+p."

"What about?"

The humming ceased, for they gave her chloroform. When she came to herself she lay for a second or two with closed eyes; then slowly, luxuriously nearly, she opened them wide to look at her son. There was n.o.body.

"Where is he?" she gasped, sitting up, dizzy and sick with the drug, but with all her nerves strung to unnatural, uncanny perceptiveness.

The dowager was leaning over the bed and begging her to lie down.

"What's burning my face?" cried Dorothy.

"It must be my tears," her mother-in-law sobbed.

"Why are you crying? My boy, where is he? Where is he? Oh, tell me, tell me, please tell me!"

The dowager and the nurse were looking at each other pitifully.

"Dorothy, my poor child, he was born dead."

The mother shrieked, for a pain that cut her ten thousand times more sharply than all the pains of her travail united in a single spasm.

"It was a question, dear, of saving your life or losing the baby's."

"You're lying to me," Dorothy shrieked. "It was a monster! I know that.

It was a monster, and it had to be strangled. Oh, Doctor Lane, Doctor Lane, why did you let them bring another doctor? You promised me you wouldn't."

"No, no," said the dowager. "It was a perfect little boy with such lovely little hands and toes. Everything perfect; but his head was too large, dear. It was a question of you or him, and of course Tony insisted that he should be sacrificed."

"Where is he? Tony!"

Her husband came in and knelt by the bed.

"Why did you do that? Why? Why didn't you let me die? He would have been so much better than me. Can't you understand? Can't you understand?"

Everybody had stolen from the room to leave them together; but when he leaned over to kiss her she struck him on the mouth.

"You only wanted me for one thing," she cried.

"Doodles, don't treat me like this. I can't express myself. I never imagined that anything could be so horrible. I was asked to decide. You don't suppose I could have lived with a cursed child who had killed you!"

"How dare you curse him?"

"Dorothy, we'll have another. Don't be so miserable."

Suddenly she felt that nothing mattered.