“Thank you,” said Robert Vaughan, “I can promise that Maurice will never again — why, he did not care two straws for the girl — she tricked him into it.”
“H’m — what is she like? Pretty?”
“Why — I’m sure — I don’t know. I dare say.”
“I’ve seen her,” said Nicholas, “Rather an elfin creature.”
“The aunt is attractive too,” said Ernest, “in a sharp gypsy way.
Yellow hair.”
Philip laughed — “Old Ernie knows all about them!”
He took his brother by the shoulder. “Are you sure you are not the guilty father of the infant?”
Nicholas chuckled. Mr. Vaughan gave a wry smile. Upstairs the child cried.
“What is it?” asked Philip. “Not a boy, I hope.”
“No. A girl.”
“Good. Call her Pheasant.”
Robert Vaughan thought — “Shall I ever understand these people — know how they will take things?” He repeated, rather petulantly: “Pheasant! Why Pheasant? It’s a very strange name for a little girl.”
“I’ll tell you why I chose it. As I was riding here a pheasant rose out of a clump of bushes and showed herself in the sun. She was lovely and bright and it occurred to me what a pretty name for a girl.”
Nicholas poured himself another drink. “You’re a most extraordinary fellow, Philip. Fancy choosing a name for your prospective son-in-law’s bastard at a time like this!”
“But I do choose it,” returned Philip stubbornly.
“It shall be as you say,” said Vaughan, who cared little what the child should be called.
Philip drank his second whiskey and water at a gulp. “Let’s see her,” he said, almost genially. “I like babies.”
“My God!” exclaimed Ernest. “Not newborn babies! Above all, not this one!”
“I like them all. Can’t you fetch her down, Robert?”
“Won’t it look very suspicious to the servants?” said Ernest. “We’re going to face the thing out, aren’t we?”
Robert Vaughan answered — “I will simply say that a poor woman left the child on my doorstep with a note asking me to succour it. We have been charitable people, I think, so the plea will not seem unnatural. I will say that we have agreed to provide for the child. Our housekeeper is leaving to live with her invalid mother. She would be glad, I am sure, to take it into her care. She will be going quite a long way off.”
“That sounds possible,” said Ernest. “The principal thing is to deny any intimacy between Maurice and Elvira.”
“The same story will do for Meggie. She must never hear the truth,” said Nicholas.
“Poor girl,” groaned Robert Vaughan.
“I’d like to see the child,” said Philip again.
Nicholas gave Robert Vaughan a look that said: —
“We may as well humour this strange brother of mine.”
Robert Vaughan objected — “I agree with Ernest that it will look very suspicious to the servants — my bringing the child to you.”
“Rot!” said Philip. “It will put them off the scent.”
Robert Vaughan acquiesced. He went slowly out of the room, a thin drooping figure, his sparse hair brushed smoothly across his increasing baldness.
“Looks old, doesn’t he?” observed Nicholas.
“He is old,” said Philip laconically. His eye was on his spaniel, who now raised himself against the breakfast table and drew a slice of meat from the platter.
“Keno — you brute — drop it!” ordered Nicholas.
“Too late to stop him,” said Philip. “He’s hungry. So am I.”
Ernest moved nearer the table and looked down at the neglected viands spread there. “Cold ham — looks very nice too. Egg cups — they’ll be having boiled eggs as well. No porridge spoons — sometimes I think I’d be as well without it. It’s really too filling.”
Nicholas was pouring himself another drink.
“Well,” he said, “this has been a ghastly business. But, thank God, we’ve been able to patch it up! It’s a lesson for young Maurice. He’ll likely run straight for the rest of his days. There’s the comport Mamma and Papa gave Robert’s parents on their silver anniversary.”
Ernest came to examine it. Philip had seated himself on the broad window sill. He was watching his spaniel meticulously cleaning with his tongue the spot on the floor where the ham had lain. His face looked downcast, yet not unhappy. He accepted life as it came, with only an occasional outburst of protest.
Mr. Vaughan returned to the room with the child on his arm. He had felt confused coming down the stairs, had even thought for a moment that this was the infant Maurice he held. Mrs. Vaughan had taken off the plaid shawl and the baby appeared in a clean white dress. Its tiny head was misted with dark hair. Nicholas, with a sardonic smile, Ernest, with a deprecating grimace, came at once to inspect it. Philip made no haste to move from where he sat. He had lighted his pipe and was enjoying the first fragrant puff. He held one of Keno’s ears between his fingers, handling it gently as he smoked.
“How old would you say it is?” asked Nicholas.
“Between two and three weeks — my wife thinks.”
“It’s much better looking than they usually are at that age,” observed Ernest. “Tell me, did Maurice know of its birth before this morning?”
“No. He had had word from the girl that she and her aunt were leaving. He had been certain that the child would be born in the place where they are going.”
“Disconcerting for him — this!” said Nicholas grimly.
Robert Vaughan turned toward Philip.
“You asked,” he said sternly, “to see the child.”
Philip rose and came almost nonchalantly and bent over it. “Nice little thing! A pretty little girl. I hope that housekeeper will be kind to her. How does it feel to be a grandfather, Vaughan?”
Robert Vaughan shrank from the words as from a menacing hand. “I can scarcely be called a grandfather — in the ordinary way,” he said in a shaking voice.
“Damned ordinary, I should say,” observed Philip. Through pouted lips he gently blew a cloud of smoke into the infant’s face. It drew its features together in a comical way and sneezed.
Philip smiled amiably.
“I always do it to my own,” he said. “It’s amusing to watch them.”
His elder brothers were anxious to return to Jalna. They wanted their breakfast, and there was the business of breaking the news to their mother. It had been agreed that it would not be safe to keep it from her, for she would have been suspicious at once and never ceased with questioning and probing till the truth would out. She and Mary and Augusta, combined with their men, must shield Meggie.
They rode away, as they had come, in the warm sunshine, their horses’ flanks sometimes touching, Keno trotting close to the mare’s heels. Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan watched them from their bedroom window. “Thank God,” he said, “that’s over! Now you must come and try to take a little breakfast, my dear.”
But she was not interested in her own breakfast. A feeding bottle that had once been used for her son had been filled with warm milk, and she held the rubber