Colonel Vaughan had not only persuaded the Whiteoaks to settle beside him as neighbours, but had taken them into his own house for nearly a year while their own was in process of building.
How well Robert Vaughan remembered that coming! He had only been a youth then, and the impression made on him by Adeline Whiteoak, in her brocaded silks, her bright patterned shawls from India, her feather-trimmed bonnets and beautiful beringed hands, was never to leave him. She was a being from another world. He had made much of little Augusta and Nicholas.
But the Whiteoaks never became absolutely of the country as the Vaughans had. The Vaughans had no further interest in the Old Land and never revisited it. But Nicholas, Ernest, and Philip had been sent to school in England, and many Atlantic crossings were made by the Whiteoaks.
Robert Vaughan thought tenderly of the young Meg who was soon to be married to his son. Before the summer was over she would be established in the large room across the hall which already had been freshly decorated to receive her. She was charming, she was pliable, in her Maurice’s mother would have the daughter she had always longed for. Maurice’s mother was sleeping quietly at this moment and Robert turned, putting his arm gently about her so as not to disturb her. Maurice had come to them late in their married life and, while all their hopes were centred on him, their attitude toward each other remained that of lovers.
The tone of the sunlight, where it touched the walnut bedpost, was deepening, yet he could not bring himself to leave the comfort of his bed and break the happy sequence of this thoughts. A small mother bird was beginning to feed her young in a nest above the open window, and he smiled to himself at their eager twitterings. He pictured her, balanced on the edge of the nest, selecting which open beak should be the receptacle for the fat worm she carried.
The sound grew more persistent — or was it another sound? Yes — it was distinctly another sound coming from below. Possibly a cat with its eye on the nestlings under the eaves.
But no cat had given that weak and tremulous cry! Surely it was the cry of a very young child! Yet — that was impossible — unless some countrywoman were below with her child. But he had heard no steps on the drive and his hearing was keen. The cry became louder — it was a wail. He got out of bed and put on his slippers and went softly down the stairs to the front door. No one but himself was astir. He stood in his nightclothes on the threshold bathed in the brightness of the sunrise.
There he saw, almost at his feet, a bundle wrapped in a plaid shawl. A note was pinned to the shawl and, as though he were watching someone else, he saw himself take the note, unfold it, and read the words written in a scrawling hand. “Maurice Vaughan is the father of this baby. Please be kind to it. It hasn’t harmed no one.”
The little face, barely showing above the shawl, was no more than the sheathed bud of a flower. The words he had read were horrible to him. He sank on the floor in a faint.
Noah Binns, a farm labourer, discovered him. He saw the crumpled piece of paper on the floor beside him. He picked it up, smoothed it, and read the content. No wonder the old gentleman was upset! Noah felt no surprise. He could have told a thing or two, if he had been asked. It was a piece of good fortune that he should be the bearer of this news.
He knocked loudly on the brass knocker. Simultaneously a maid came hurrying to the front door and Mrs. Vaughan put her head out of her bedroom window.
“Noah!” she called. “What has happened?”
“It’s Mr. Vaughan, ma’am. He’s swooned. I rang the bell as I thought you’d like to know.”
The maid exclaimed to Noah: “You fool! Why didn’t you raise up his head?” Then she saw the baby.
“What does this mean?” she gasped.
“It’s the young feller’s,” said Noah. “His and Elvira Gray’s. I’ve seen them in the woods together.”
Mrs. Vaughan came running down the stairs, gathering her dressing gown about her.
“Robert!” she cried. “My dear!”
At the sound of her voice he opened his eyes.
“I’ll get brandy,” said the maid.
Mrs. Vaughan knelt down beside her husband and took his head on her knees. He hid his eyes against her dressing gown and groaned. She saw the note and took it up with foreboding.
“No, no,” he said, loud and clear, “you mustn’t read it!” But he had not the strength to prevent her.
She crushed it in her hand and turned white.
The maid came running with the brandy. “I’ve telephoned for the doctor,” she said, trembling so that she slopped the spirits. Mrs. Vaughan picked up the child and felt the strange penetrating power of its fragile body.
Noah Binns stared at all three, missing no detail of the portentous picture they made. Mr. Vaughan was looking less pallid.
“Give me a hand, Noah,” he said. “I’m feeling better. I can’t think what made me faint. I never did such a thing before. Just the shock of finding this poor little child on the doorstep, I guess. An unfortunate village girl left it here hoping we would take it in. That’s what the note said. She hoped we would pity it and take it in. Poor girl — poor girl — If anyone asks you what happened, Noah, just tell them that, will you?”
With Noah Binns’s help he got to his feet.
“I’ll tell ’em just what you say, sir,” agreed Noah. “It’s a good thing to have a proper story. They’re a pesky lot to gossip here.”
“Did you say you telephoned for the doctor?” Robert Vaughan asked the maid when they were inside the hall with the door shut behind them and Noah Binns’s heavy boots stumping in the direction of Jalna.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well —” he spoke testily — “telephone again and stop him, if possible. I am quite recovered. I cannot imagine why I fainted. Just the shock — well, a man doesn’t expect to find a young baby on his doorstep.”
“No, indeed, sir.” The maid looked at him pityingly. “Shall I take the baby to the kitchen, ma’am?”
“No. I’ll keep it with me till we decide what is to be done with it.” Mrs. Vaughan felt weak with the weight of the child, as though it had a mysterious power to crush her down. She swayed as she and her husband reached the top of the stairs. He put his arm about her.
“You’re not going to faint too, are you?” He gave her a ghastly smile.
“No wonder if I would!” She dropped into a chair, holding the infant on her lap. She looked at the familiar room, as though it were some sinister habitation into which she had suddenly been thrust. Even the face of her husband looked strange and unnatural to her. The only object in the room that did look natural to her was the face of the child, for it was the face of Maurice as he had looked when an infant. She gazed at it as though she would never look away. She undid the shawl and examined the little hands and feet.
“No one will believe that the child has no connection with us,” groaned Robert Vaughan. “I might as well have given Binns the note to read and told him to blazen it forth to the countryside.”
“No one can prove that it is Maurice’s child. But it is — I’m sure of that! Why, Robert, can’t you see it? Look at it from where I am. Can’t you see his face when he was a baby?”
“The young wastrel! The young villain. The sly rake!”
Never in his life had he said a word against his son. Now they were torn from him painfully in a voice neither he nor his wife had heard before. She said: —
“If the Whiteoaks suspect Maurice of being the father, they will never, never let Meggie marry him!”
“They must not suspect him! We must prevent that, at any cost. I had rather take the fatherhood of it on my own shoulders, so help