"She's been like that ever since this morning. Mr. Fiorsen's been in more than once, ma'am, and the fact is, baby don't like it. He stares at her so. But this morning I thought--well--I thought:
'You're her father. It's time she was getting used to you.' So Ilet them be a minute; and when I came back--I was only just across to the bathroom--he was comin' out lookin' quite fierce and white, and baby--oh, screamin'! And except for sleepin', she's hardly stopped cryin' since."Pressing the baby to her breast, Gyp sat very still, and queer thoughts went through her mind.
"How has he been, Betty?" she said.
Betty plaited her apron; her moon-face was troubled.
"Well," she said, "I think he's been drinkin'. Oh, I'm sure he has--I've smelt it about him. The third day it began. And night before last he came in dreadfully late--I could hear him staggerin'
about, abusing the stairs as he was comin' up. Oh dear--it IS a pity!"The baby, who had been still enough since she lay in her mother's lap, suddenly raised her little voice again. Gyp said:
"Betty, I believe something hurts her arm. She cries the moment she's touched there. Is there a pin or anything? Just see. Take her things off. Oh--look!"Both the tiny arms above the elbow were circled with dark marks, as if they had been squeezed by ruthless fingers. The two women looked at each other in horror; and under her breath Gyp said:
"He!"
She had flushed crimson; her eyes filled but dried again almost at once. And, looking at her face, now gone very pale, and those lips tightened to a line, Betty stopped in her outburst of ejaculation.
When they had wrapped the baby's arm in remedies and cotton-wool, Gyp went into her bedroom, and, throwing herself down on her bed, burst into a passion of weeping, smothering it deep in her pillow.
It was the crying of sheer rage. The brute! Not to have control enough to stop short of digging his claws into that precious mite!
Just because the poor little thing cried at that cat's stare of his! The brute! The devil! And he would come to her and whine about it, and say: "My Gyp, I never meant--how should I know I was hurting? Her crying was so-- Why should she cry at me? I was upset! I wasn't thinking!" She could hear him pleading and sighing to her to forgive him. But she would not--not this time!
He had hurt a helpless thing once too often. Her fit of crying ceased, and she lay listening to the tick of the clock, and marshalling in her mind a hundred little evidences of his malevolence toward her baby--his own baby. How was it possible?
Was he really going mad? And a fit of such chilly shuddering seized her that she crept under the eider down to regain warmth.
In her rage, she retained enough sense of proportion to understand that he had done this, just as he had insulted Monsieur Harmost and her father--and others--in an ungovernable access of nerve-irritation; just as, perhaps, one day he would kill someone. But to understand this did not lessen her feeling. Her baby! Such a tiny thing! She hated him at last; and she lay thinking out the coldest, the cruellest, the most cutting things to say. She had been too long-suffering.
But he did not come in that evening; and, too upset to eat or do anything, she went up to bed at ten o'clock. When she had undressed, she stole across to the nursery; she had a longing to have the baby with her--a feeling that to leave her was not safe.
She carried her off, still sleeping, and, locking her doors, got into bed. Having warmed a nest with her body for the little creature, she laid it there; and then for a long time lay awake, expecting every minute to hear him return. She fell asleep at last, and woke with a start. There were vague noises down below or on the stairs. It must be he! She had left the light on in her room, and she leaned over to look at the baby's face. It was still sleeping, drawing its tiny breaths peacefully, little dog-shivers passing every now and then over its face. Gyp, shaking back her dark plaits of hair, sat up by its side, straining her ears.
Yes; he WAS coming up, and, by the sounds, he was not sober. She heard a loud creak, and then a thud, as if he had clutched at the banisters and fallen; she heard muttering, too, and the noise of boots dropped. Swiftly the thought went through her: 'If he were quite drunk, he would not have taken them off at all;--nor if he were quite sober. Does he know I'm back?' Then came another creak, as if he were raising himself by support of the banisters, and then--or was it fancy?--she could hear him creeping and breathing behind the door. Then--no fancy this time--he fumbled at the door and turned the handle. In spite of his state, he must know that she was back, had noticed her travelling-coat or seen the telegram. The handle was tried again, then, after a pause, the handle of the door between his room and hers was fiercely shaken.