Chapter XIV: The Wheel in the Brain

'Mine, mine--not yours,
It is not yours but mine,--give me the child'

It was half-an-hour before Larrie came back and found the tossed, empty cot. He strode out of the house again, and up the hill in a fury of passion.

Out of the train into which he had seen his friends, Wooster had stepped and gone at quick speed, straight up the road leading to the house. Larrie was not to know it was intended for the last visit of a lifetime. He resisted the inclination to follow and slay him outright, and went home instead--to find Dot had been there and taken away the child.

A second jealousy sprang up in his heart, jealousy of his own little baby son. He could imagine the pass to which Dot had come, imagine the heart hungerness that had prompted this. But it was all for the child--none of the aching and longing had been for himself. The front door of the house was open, he went straight through the hall and upstairs two steps at a time to the sitting-room.

Dot was sitting rocking alone in the firelight; the little mother had gone to a sudden case of illness in a cottage near, and Wooster had taken her.

The child's little soft head lay against her breast, she held both its bare little feet in her hand. There were tear-wet places on her cheeks, and the eyes that looked down on the child were full of tenderness, but her lips were rather tightly closed. She could not forget the verandah, and Larrie's burst of laughter.

He strode across the room.

'Give me the child,' he said.

Her arms closed tightly round it.

'He is mine, mine,' she said.

'Give him to me,' he cried again.

She sprang to the door her eyes gleaming, her hands holding the little soft body with desperate firmness. But he was before her, he looked down at her with white face, and eyes blazing with scorn.

'You are not fit to hold him,' he said.

She was moving across to the second door clasping her burden convulsively.

'I will die before you shall have him,' she said passionately.

'No you will not,' he said.

His words came slowly, there was a horrible note in his voice, 'There is--your lover, you know.'

She turned and looked at him, incredulous horror in her wide eyes, her arms loosened their hold a little, she went a step towards him. But the light of madness in his eyes increased, he tore the child from her arms, and carried it away with him out into the night.

* * * * *

He went slowly down the hill he had come up in such wild haste. He had not felt the night wind before, but now it blew chillily on his burning forehead and quietened the fever in his blood. He took off his coat and wrapped it round the child, which lay warm and sleepy and quiet against his shoulder all the way.

There had seemed to be a strange wheel working in his brain lately, it had gone at a maddening rate during his short interview with Dot. But something in the great hush of the grey-blue night stopped it for a time and a sudden calmness and power of reasoning came to him once more.

When he reached the cottage he put the child down again in the cot and covered it up warmly. Then he walked about staring at his misery. He knew it had grown utterly past bearing. Everything in the place spoke of Dot, spoke loudly and insistently, the silent piano, the dead flowers in the vases, the foolish little red watering pot on the verandah nail, the small garden boots in the hall corner with the red clay of the roads dried on the heels. When he poured out his coffee at breakfast time he shuddered because he saw beside him the little dear bright face that was not there--when he helped himself to an egg he could not eat it, because the stand held only two, instead of the by custom sacred three.

That was the warm old jacket on the second hall peg that she always slipped on, to sit outside with him for his smoke, the big poppy trimmed hat beside it, still kept the shape of her head in its crown. He could not get away from it all. His eyes too refused to give up the picture of her they had seen to-night, the tender innocent face, the pure eyes, the trembling lips. Half-past ten brought the very end of his endurance, his bitterness and his unbelief.

It had taken all these six days for his brain to grow clear and healthy again; with the lifting of the strange cloud came the sudden horror of the thing he had done, a shame at the shame he had heaped on her. He found responsibilities that were his, he remembered the tenderness and watchfulness and love which her eighteen years demanded, he saw with lightning clearness that it had been sheer insanity that had distorted a simple friendship and shamed them both.

He took up his hat to go out again. He would go and beseech her forgiveness though he told himself of course, she could not possibly give it. Still he would entreat her.

Then the strange wheel began again in his head, and as he walked a new hot swinging sensation there, made him almost unconscious of what was going on for minutes together. He took off his hat and went on blindly, there were two shrinking figures in the shadow by the fence but he did not heed them.

He knew quite well now what was going to happen to him, he was getting that same brain fever again, he had had two years ago; it accounted for everything.

He found a strange comfort in the knowledge. He was going to Dot--by the time he got to the lights and voices of the house he knew his senses would have gone and his illness come upon him, his danger would touch her little tender heart and she would forgive. He even saw a vision of his convalescence and white beautiful days beyond.

Then he came to the lights and people of the house, and before the little mother could speak a word, the danger came upon him and the need of forgiveness.