He spread out the sheet of paper and read the words once more. “Who is she? Who is this girl?”
“I can’t imagine … Why, Robert, it’s impossible! We’re wronging Maurice in suspecting him for a moment. As though he could do such a thing! He’s to be married in a few weeks, and to that sweet girl!”
“What did you say a moment ago about the resemblance?”
“I must imagine it.”
He came and they bent over the child. It made a little hiccupping sound and a trickle of whitish liquid ran from the corner of its mouth.
“Oh, poor little thing!” Mrs. Vaughan wiped its chin with her handkerchief.
“What colour are its eyes?”
“Very dark blue — no, brown.”
“H’m, Maurice’s are grey.”
“Robert, there’s no resemblance. I was just hysterical.”
“Well, we’ll soon find out. I’ll have an interview with that young man.” He spoke grimly.
“But it can’t be true! Oh, if only you had not fainted! We might have got the child away without anyone’s knowing about it.”
“Did what I said to Binns sound convincing?”
“Oh, yes.” And again she looked at him pityingly.
He pressed his hands to his head. “My God, wife, what are we to do with the child — if the boy acknowledges it?”
“Robert, you do believe it is his?”
“Well, if the girl made up such a story she’d be a fiend. Everyone knows he is just about to be married.”
“Girls have lied before.”
The child made a sucking movement with its lips and began to cry. Its cry was unexpectedly loud and piercing. The two elderly people trembled like two conspirators. She hushed it with consoling pats.
“Maurice will hear it!”
“I have a mind to carry it to his room and face him with it.”
“No, no, I think I had better go to him.”
“I must see my son myself.” He spoke with authority. He hurriedly drew on his clothes.
“Do be kind to him!”
“If he denies this, I’ll go down on my knees and beg his pardon!”
He repeated these words to himself as he went down the passage to Maurice’s room. He had never had a scene with him in his life. Between himself and his boy there had existed perfect understanding. And now —
He remembered seeing Nicholas Whiteoak, when he was almost the age of Maurice, knocked down by a blow from his father. Captain Whiteoak had thrashed all his boys. His wife had even taken a hand in it. He had heard of the scene of which young Renny had been the centre when he had been suspended from college a month ago.
He opened Maurice’s door softly.
Maurice was lying, his hand under his cheek, his forehead smooth. The blanket was pushed off and beneath the sheet of his body, with the strong legs bent, was the body of a man. Robert Vaughan looked down at him almost fearfully. Out of his slender, delicate body he had begotten this heavily built muscular one. Maurice was like his mother’s people. Yet he had always felt in such close communion with his son. He could not believe, looking at him quietly sleeping, that he had had this shameful secret life. He touched him on the shoulder.
“Maurice!”
His son opened his eyes, blinked, half smiled.
“Yes, Father.” He was not startled. It was not unusual for him to be wakened, to be persuaded to go out to enjoy the beauty of the morning or reminded that his mother liked him to breakfast with her.
“Maurice, sit up and read this.”
Robert Vaughan put the crushed sheet of paper into Maurice’s hand. At the same moment, the baby, as though in anguish of spirit, gave a loud cry in Mrs. Vaughan’s room.
Maurice turned white. His hand that held the note shook. He stared at it fixedly, not able to read.
“Read it,” repeated his father. “Read it aloud.”
Maurice read, in a shaking voice: —
“‘Maurice Vaughan is the father — ’” he stared horrified at his
own father.
“Go on,” said Robert Vaughan gently.
“‘The father of this baby.’”
Again the cry of the child penetrated from the other room.
“She lies!” Maurice burst out.
“Who lies?”
“Elvira Gray.”
“Oh, my God!” Robert Vaughan sank to the side of the bed and covered his face with his hands.
“Father, don’t! I tell you it isn’t true!”
Robert Vaughan began to cry, his whole body shaking convulsively.
“Father! I can’t bear it! What do you want me to say?”
His father uncovered a ravaged face.
“When did you meet this — this Elvira Gray? Where did it happen? Don’t be afraid. Tell me everything.”
Maurice’s misery was complete. The sound of his father’s sobbing, the sight of his face, were terrible to him.
“When did she bring it here?” he asked.
“This morning — before anyone was about. She left it on the step. Its crying woke me.”
“She promised — she promised — !”
“What?”
“To go away. I gave her money.”
“You gave her money…. Yes…. What money, Maurice?”
“Oh, Father, don’t ask me that!”
“No. I don’t need to ask you…. I can guess…. My God, when I think how your mother and I have trusted you — how proud we’ve been of you!”
“Dad, I wish I’d died before I brought such trouble on you!”
“Don’t say that! We must face it together.”
Maurice wrung his hands. His face was distorted by remorse and shame.
“Go on,” said his father sternly.
“Mother and you will never be able to forgive me.”
“Maurice, I beg of you, tell me everything. I must know what to say to the Whiteoaks.”
Maurice groaned.
“If they know the truth of it they will never let Meg marry me.” He felt that he had reached the depths of despair. With his face hidden in his hands he poured out the story of his meetings with Elvira.
VII
Messenger of Fate
Meg Whiteoak was awake early that morning. She was stirred from her dreams by something new and exciting in the sweet summer air. Or was it some delicate current stirring in her own nerves? She made no attempt to discover which, but lay looking out of half open eyes through the white frilled muslin curtains of her window at the gently moving treetops. She liked to see the trees move gently so, like stately ladies fanning themselves. She liked the indolent morning conversation between two pigeons just above the eaves. She stretched out her bare white arm and let her glance slide along its glistening surface. She noted the pinkness of her