CHAPTER XXII.
A BEAUTIFUL CHILD.
“A child of shame!” Pansy echoed, and a wave of hot color rushed over her face as she remembered the little child that had died before its young mother ever saw its face.
“Yes,” answered the stately lady, rather coldly. “He is a foundling, and was left on our steps almost three years ago. We would have sent it to the almshouse, but our old housekeeper, who has been with us so many years that we like to indulge her some, took a fancy to the little one, and begged to keep it.”
“It is a beautiful little child. I could not help falling in love with it,” said Pansy earnestly, while Juliette sneered:
“It is a pity you have not a child of your own to love!”
“I wish I had,” Pansy answered. “I am very fond of children.” And she wished within herself that she could have little Pet to carry home with her, for a wild suspicion was growing up in her heart: What if this were her own child?
Her mother had told her that her child had died, but perhaps she had deceived her. Perhaps Mr. Finley, whom she had always disliked and distrusted, had taken the child away and forced her mother to utter that falsehood. What more natural than that he should have placed it on the threshold of the Wylde mansion?
Wild suspicion grew almost into agonized certainty as she recalled the startling likeness of the child to Norman Wylde.
“Is it possible that his family can fail to see the likeness in his face?” she wondered, and, while she held with difficulty her part in the conversation going forward over the merits of different summer resorts, she was thinking wildly:
“I do not believe now that my baby died. This child, with Norman’s eyes, belongs to me. My heart claimed him the moment he appeared at the door. And he was fond of me, too. He struggled so hard to get back to me when Rosalind forced him away. Oh, I must manage somehow to see that old housekeeper soon, and find out all that I can about little Pet.”
“I think I shall go to White Sulphur Springs,” said Mrs. Wylde. “Have you decided where you shall go, Mrs. Falconer?”
“No, I cannot come to a decision, so I shall leave it to my husband,” replied Pansy.
“Oh, then you must go to White Sulphur! It is charming there,” cried Juliette, who wanted to go wherever the Wyldes went.
“One place will please me quite as well as another,” Pansy replied indifferently; and when they took their leave it was quite understood that the Wyldes and the Falconers were to form a party for the springs as soon as possible.
“But,” said dark-eyed Rosalind to her mother, “Juliette is going to be disappointed, for, of course, she thinks Norman is going with us.”
“Norman must go. It is quite foolish, his being so stiff with us, and resenting things that were only done for his good,” Mrs. Wylde replied, in a displeased tone.
When Pansy and Juliette were riding home, the latter observed:
“Mrs. Falconer, did you notice what a strong resemblance that foundling child had to Norman Wylde?”
Pansy looked at her with a startled air, and answered:
“You know I’ve only seen Norman Wylde once, and can’t really recall his features exactly. Does the child really resemble him? And, if so, what does it mean?”
“Norman Wylde has lived a very fast life, you know,” Juliette answered. “I have long suspected that the child is his own, flung upon his doorstep in desperation by some one of his victims. Perhaps he suspects, perhaps he does not—but I feel almost certain of its parentage.”
“And the family?” Pansy asked faintly.
“I do not believe they suspect anything. If they did, they would not permit it to be kept beneath their roof. They would be perfectly furious,” replied Juliette, with an air of certainty, and watching Pansy closely for some signs of emotion.
But the beautiful girl seemed to grow suddenly weary of the subject, for she said:
“I wonder if my trousseau will do for the White Sulphur, or if I ought to order anything new?”
“You will not need a new thing, nor shall I, as I am in mourning, and cannot dance this season,” replied Juliette.
As their carriage rolled along Grace Street, they saw Norman Wylde among the pedestrians on the pavement. He lifted his hat, and passed on without stopping, to the chagrin of Juliette, who hoped he would stop and chat with her a while.
Her conscience did not reproach her for the falsehoods she had uttered against his fair fame, although she knew that there was not a purer, more high-minded young man in the whole city. But while she was still uncertain as to the identity of her uncle’s wife, it suited her best to pretend that Norman Wylde was dissolute and guilty. Although she suspected that little Pet was the child of Pansy Laurens, she was not certain, and she did not wish Mrs. Falconer to believe it.
“She will, if she is really Pansy Laurens, hate him more if she believes that the child is some other woman’s,” she thought shrewdly, and smiled when she saw the signs of trouble that Pansy could not wholly disguise on her fair face.
Poor Pansy! Her heart was well-nigh breaking, and when she reached home she feigned a headache, that she might have an excuse for shutting herself up in her own room to think over the events of to-day, which had aroused suspicions never to be laid again until they were either confirmed or proved baseless. The dark eyes of the little child had aroused the mother’s heart within her breast, and it ached with a bitter yearning.
“Oh, if my baby did not die, they were cruel and wicked to deceive me, to cheat me out of its love all these years! But only let me find out if that child is mine, and I will have it—I will!” she sobbed wildly, in a mood of passionate recklessness.
But suddenly she heard her husband’s voice in the hall, and shivered.
“Oh, what am I talking of? How dare I claim my child in the face of everything that is against me?” she moaned bitterly; and just then Colonel Falconer entered, with a face full of anxiety.
“They told me you had a headache. Can I do anything for you, my darling?” he asked tenderly.
“Only love me and pity me,” the girl answered, almost despairingly, out of her hidden sorrow.
He was alarmed at her tone, and feared she was suffering greatly.
“Let me send for a physician,” he urged.
“No, no, I do not need medicine—only rest and quiet,” she pleaded, with a feeling of remorse in her heart that she could not love him better—he was so good and true.
But since she had come back to Richmond, she was conscious that there was less chance than ever for her to love her husband in the ardent fashion to which he had the best claim. Her affection for him was so calm, so friendly, only, while, to her dismay, all her old madness had returned at the first sight of Norman Wylde’s handsome face.
“Oh what a tyrant love is!” she sighed bitterly. “I thought I hated him—I know I ought to hate him—yet his face haunts me as it did in those old days when I loved him first. I dream of him by night, and I think of him by day, in spite of every endeavor to forget him. Heaven help me, for I am wretched!”
Days passed, and Pansy found some relief from the haunting image of Norman Wylde in thinking of the little child that she firmly believed to be her own. She struck up a great intimacy with the Wyldes in hopes of seeing the little one more frequently; but she was disappointed.
Apparently the housekeeper had received strict orders, for Pet’s black eyes were no longer to be seen laughing around the drawing-room door, nor his footsteps heard pattering through the halls. There was a sunny plot of grass in the back yard where he played all day now, except when he was in that part of the house allotted to the housekeeper.
But he had never forgotten the “pretty yady,” and he often asked Mrs. Meade, the housekeeper, about her, prattling so sweetly that the good old woman grew quite curious, and at last asked Mrs. Wylde about Mrs. Falconer.
“Yes, she is very beautiful—the most beautiful woman I ever saw,” Mrs. Wylde admitted. “She took quite a fancy to Pet, and admitted she was fond of children.”
“He is always talking about her. I never knew him so fond of any one before,” said Mrs. Meade. “Did you say she came from California, ma’am?”
“Colonel Falconer married her in California, but she is a native of Kentucky, and was never in Richmond until now,” was the reply, which, if Mrs. Meade had harbored any suspicion, at once dissipated.
Still she cherished a desire to see the woman who had been so kind to her little adopted child as to win its warm little heart.
“I’d like to thank her for noticing the poor, forsaken little lamb,” she said to herself. “No one ever shows it any kindness, except Mr. Norman, and Heaven knows he ought to love it, for I firmly believe he is the father, though whether he suspects it or not, I can’t tell. Anyway, he’s fond of it, and kind to it.”