“I’m very sorry, my lord,” he said heavily. Justin
looked up at him in sharp fear; his hand froze in the act of dipping the cloth back into the basin of water. If he had been white before, in that instant he looked like a living corpse.
“It is up to you,” the doctor continued in the same tone. “I cannot save them both.”
Justin stared at him blankly. Dr. Lampeter’s eyes had profound sympathy in their depths.
“Your wife or your child, my lord,” the doctor spelled out quietly. “Which is it to be?”
Justin felt as if a large hand were crushing his heart. He shut his eyes briefly, picturing the son he had not known he loved until that moment.
“Save my wife,” he said bleakly. Then, his movements jerky, he got up from the bed and crossed to the window, staring blindly out into the night while the doctor did his work.
An hour later it was all over. The child was a boy, the son Justin had wanted for years without knowing that he did so. He was perfectly formed despite the fact that he was but eight months. The umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around his neck, which had suffocated him as he passed down the birth canal. If Justin had chosen to save his son at the expense of Megan’s life, the doctor would have had to cut the child from her belly, and Megan, exhausted by the long labor and loss of blood, would almost surely have died.
Megan had not regained consciousness by the time the child was buried early the next morning. Justin, haggard from lack of sleep and sorrow, dressed in
somber black, stood with his head bowed as the tiny body of his son was lowered into a small grave dug during the previous afternoon. Charles stood a little to one side and behind him as Reverend Peake conducted the brief service. Except for the servants, who stood at a respectful distance, he was the only other mourner. Janet had elected to remain at Megan’s bedside. Megan was still not out of danger, and someone stayed with her constantly.
Megan would have to be told when she awoke, and he would have to be the one to do it. The thought haunted Justin all through that afternoon and into the night. By losing control that evening when he had slapped Megan’s face, he had killed his son as surely as if he had shot him. Justin knew it, and the grief and guilt he felt were not helped by the fact that only he and Megan knew precisely what had transpired before she had fallen over the cliff. If she hadn’t hated him before, she would hate him as soon as she found out about the child, Justin knew. He dreaded telling her, and yet it was his responsibility. He could not, would not, shirk it.
He sat by her bedside all night, alone, his face bleak and his eyes brooding. Janet had left him only reluctantly, alarmed by his looks after the small funeral. She, who had known him for years, had wiped his infrequent tears in the nursery and done her best to curb his boyish excesses, had never seen him look so sad and defeated. Her heart went out to him, and to the pale, still girl in the bed. Janet alone, of all the
household, had known how much Megan’s baby had come to mean to her. She knew the girl would be devastated by her loss.
Dawn was painting the sky a pale rosy pink when Megan’s eyes opened at last. Justin had not slept, and he was seated in a chair near the bed, staring out past the open draperies at the beautiful promise of the sunrise. He looked exhausted and sick to death. Looking at his dark profile, silhouetted against the growing light outside the window, Megan had a horrible premonition. Only a tragedy would make him look like that.
“Justin,” she whispered, barely getting his name out past lips that were dry and cracked. She was half afraid and half hoping that he wouldn’t hear her, but he turned to look at her instantly. As he saw her eyes wide upon him he got slowly to his feet, and came to stand beside the bed, his movements those of an old, old man. With the lighted window behind him, he was a tall, dark shape looking down at her. Megan’s eyes fastened with painful intensity on the deep shadows which obscured his face.
“My baby… ?” The question was a mere breath of sound. If he answered as she somehow knew he was going to, she wasn’t going to be able to stand it.
There was a pause that seemed to stretch for years, but could in reality have lasted for only a couple of heartbeats.
“We lost him.” Justin knew of no other, more tactful way to say it. In truth, there was no way that would
lessen the pain that he knew the loss of their child must inflict upon her. He watched her pale face turn even whiter, watched the beautiful violet eyes widen as if from a blow, and instinctively reached down to cradle her in his arms. To his everlasting agony, she turned her head away. His hands dropped to his sides without touching her.
“Please go away,” she said in a voice as cold as stone. Justin had known how she would feel toward him, and yet even that pre-knowledge had not prepared him for the shaft of raw pain that went through him at her words.
He wanted to plead with her, to beg her forgiveness, to cry like a child on her bosom, but he did none of these things. Instead, his heart breaking, he turned silently on his heel and left the room, sending Janet up to take his place.
Megan’s grief was like a fog around her, preventing her from seeing beyond its dense boundaries. Nothing and no one had any reality for her over the next few weeks except her loss. She felt as if a part of herself had died, and she mourned for it as she had never dreamed she could mourn for anything. She knew that Justin was suffering, and yet she couldn’t reach out to him, comforting him and drawing comfort from him in turn. It took every ounce of her strength to exist from day to day.
It was Janet who got her out of bed at last, and bullied her into resuming her daily walks outside. Instinctively she avoided the cliffs where she had loved
to walk before; instead she followed the road that led toward town for some little distance before turning back. Once she went as far as the small graveyard, and stood for a long time looking down at the mound with its tiny stone lamb that marked the resting place of her son. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t go there again.
Janet accompanied her on all these expeditions, and with the part of her mind that still concerned itself with mundane activities, Megan realized that she was never left alone except at night. And then either Janet or one of the maids would sleep in the adjoining sitting room, with the door ajar in case she should need something.
It was June, and the weather was beautiful. Part of Megan wildly resented the picture-perfect days that dawned with such vitality while her child lay in a cold, dark grave. She could not cry for the loss of her son, but she could rage against the fate that had taken him. And this she did, silently, bitterly, every hour of every day.
Justin remained at Windsmere. This would have surprised Megan if she had been capable of being surprised by anything. As it was, he was nothing more or less to her than a terrible reminder of her grief. She avoided him, and if he looked haggard and ill the few times she chanced to see him, she didn’t notice it. There was no room in her heart for anything but pain.
Charles went away briefly, and then returned to Windsmere. Megan noticed neither his coming or going. She never saw him. All her meals were taken on
a tray in her room, and except for her daily walk she kept strictly within the confines of her suite.
It was late one night more than five weeks after the loss of the baby that Megan awoke to lie staring up at the canopy above her bed for what seemed like hours. She had not been sleeping well, and she supposed glumly that this was going to be another one of those nights when she would lie awake until it was time to get up. Then, for the first time in a long while, it occurred to her that she didn’t have to just passively lie there. She could get up, move about the room, even go outside for a walk if she was careful not to waken Janet in the sitting room. For a while she turned the possibilities over in her mind, marveling at the notion that she actually had an alternative to lying sleepless, and then she made the ultimate effort and got up. Moving stealthily, she retrieved her wrapper from the foot of the bed and pulled it on, tying the sash loosely around her waist which was nearly as slim as it had been before. The very act of belting her waist brought her lost baby poignantly to the forefront of her mind, and for a moment Megan hesitated, on the verge of going back to bed. She did not really feel up to a midnight walk, after all. And then her natural strength asserted itself. She would go for a walk. It was a small thing, but a necessary step in recovering from her grief.
She crept downstairs, not wanting to wake anyone and have to suffer through their inevitable questions, and moved silently toward the front door. To her surprise,
a few candles still flickered in their sconces, and as she moved closer to the door she understood why: Everyone was not yet in bed. She heard voices, masculine voices, coming from the rose parlor, on her left. As she drew nearer to the door of the room, which had been left slightly ajar, she recognized those deep, harsh tones as belonging to Justin. Automatically she stopped just outside, leaned lightly against the wall and listened.
Justin was talking to Charles, and from the thickness of his speech and slight slurring of his words, she guessed that he had been drinking.
“You think I haven’t told myself that?” Justin was saying bitterly.
Charles’ voice was quiet as he replied. “It’s Megan you should be telling.”
“How can I? She despises me and with good reason.”
“Justin… ” There was a wealth of sympathy in the word.
“God, Charles, I’ve made such a mess of it.” Justin’s voice was suddenly muffled, as if he had dropped his head onto his hands. “I wanted her so much, I couldn’t keep my hands off her. I knew better, I hated myself for it, and yet I couldn’t help it. I swear by all that’s holy I never even meant to touch her. I just couldn’t help myself. She was so lovely and so sweet. I never wanted anything in my life as much as I wanted her. And she wanted me, too—said she loved me. Hero-worship, I suppose, though I wouldn’t let myself
think that at the time. Whatever it was, I took advantage of it. She was a seventeen-year-old bloody virgin, and my ward, and I took her to bed. Afterwards, when I realized what I’d done, I felt about two inches high. The whole bloody thing was my fault entirely. She didn’t even know I was married. Can you believe that? Seems that in all those years we were visiting her, neither of us ever mentioned Alicia. That’s when she started to hate me, you know: when she found out about Alicia. I can’t say that I blame her. There’s no excuse for what I did. I ruined her life and killed my own baby.”
“Justin… ” Charles tried to break in, but Justin’s words tumbled out one over the other, as if now that he had started he couldn’t stop.
“Just once, I told myself. Just once, something for me. I wanted her, and I took her. I put her through hell, Charles. I hurt her, and I shamed her. God, do you know how she came to fall over that cliff? She was running from me. I hit her. You’re right to look at me like that, it was a dastardly thing to do, but I was so jealous that it was eating me up inside, and before I even knew I was thinking about it, it was done. She was running from me, and she fell over that cliff and she lost our baby. I suppose I’m lucky it didn’t kill her, too. God, Charles, take my advice and don’t ever fall in love. It hurts like hell.”
As Megan listened to this tortured speech, she felt as if a great beam of light had broken through the fog that had surrounded her. She had never thought of
Justin’s side in all this—never even imagined that he was hurting so badly. From the raw agony in his voice, she realized that he had suffered every bit as much as she. He had loved their baby, too, and he blamed himself for its death. Maybe that made his pain even greater than hers. And from the sound of things, he loved her, too, despite all that had happened.
Suddenly she realized how selfish she had been since the baby’s death, shutting herself away with her grief, refusing to realize that Justin needed her. He needed her. That thought brought with it the first glimmer of joy she had known in weeks. She had hurt him, and only she could comfort him in his pain.
At least she could ease his guilt about the baby. Her fall had been as much her fault as his. She had not really been running from him—that single slap had hardly constituted a brutal assault—so much as she had been fleeing her own emotions. And with a child on the way she should have known better. Perhaps their son would have lived if her pregnancy had gone to full term; perhaps not. Janet had told her about the umbilical cord around his neck, and that could have happened at any time. It might possibly have corrected itself in time, but neither she nor Justin nor anyone in the world could be sure of that. The loss of their child had been the will of God. But it did no good to rail against such a blow from fate. It had happened, it was over, and she and Justin still had the rest of their lives together. And Megan realized, with a sudden lifting of the dense gray misery which had enshrouded her, that
more than anything in the world she wanted to live the rest of her life with Justin.
A tiny part of her grief had been magnified by fear. She had been desperately afraid, without even knowing that she was afraid, that, now that the baby, the reason for their marriage, was gone, Justin would regret it. He had sacrificed so much to make her his wife—destroyed the whole fabric of his life. It would be years, if ever, before he could resume his seat in the House of Lords, before he could walk into his club without whispers following him, before anyone in society would even mention his name without associating it with scandal. He had done all this because he was an honorable man, and he had gotten her with child. Would he have done it for her alone, if she had not been expecting? Was his love for her strong enough to drive him to such measures for its own sake? Secretly, she had feared not. But now she remembered him asking her to marry him the night Donald had announced their engagement. He had offered then to get a divorce, if she would wait for him. And, because of the baby, she had turned him down. But if there had been no baby, she would have waited forever. But, without knowing about the baby, he had asked her to marry him, fully aware of the consequences to his good name and his future position in society. How then could she doubt his love for her?