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The little boy lay on his right side, and as they moved round to the edge of the large cot, Elwyn, with a sudden tightening of the throat, became aware that the child was neither asleep nor, as he in his ignorance had expected to find him, sunk in stupor or delirium.
Bellair had taken a house not far from London that lovely summer. Ah, that little house! Elwyn could remember every bush, almost every flower that had flowered, in the walled garden during those enchanted weeks.
Bellair's voice had dropped to a low, gruff whisper. Elwyn remained alone. He could hear slight movements going on in the room into which Bellair had just gone; and then there also fell on his ears the deep, regular sound of snoring. Who could be asleep in the house at such a moment? The sound disturbed him; it seemed to add a touch of grotesque horror to the situation.
Then turning to his five victorious archers, who had drawn near, he added, "Ye have heard, my men, how that I have a wager with the Queen upon your prowess. Now here be men of her choosing certain free shafts of Sherwood and Barnesdale. Wherefore look well to it, Gilbert and Tepus and Geoffrey and Elwyn and Clifton!
That was just seven years ago, and Elwyn had never seen Fanny's child. He had been away from England for over a year, and when he came back he learned that the Bellairs were away, living in the country, where they had taken a house for the sake of their boy.
Elwyn remembered how his mother had pressed him to accept an invitation to a country house where Winifred Fanshawe was to be. But Mrs. Elwyn had never spoken to her son of her wishes until the day he had come and told her that he intended to ask Winifred to marry him, and then her unselfish joy had moved him and brought them very near to one another.
But he did not utter his thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her narrowness of vision, of her dislike of modern ways and new fashions. Mrs. Elwyn after her husband's death had given up the world.
Elwyn again spoke: "Perhaps I ought to add," she said hurriedly, "that I know one thing to Mrs. Bellair's credit. I am told that she is a most devoted and careful mother to that little boy of hers. I heard to-day that the child is seriously ill, and that she and the child's nurse are doing everything for him." Mrs. Elwyn's voice had softened, curiously.
But he had drawn back, assuring himself and this time honestly that his shrinking from that course, now surely the only honest course, was not wholly ignoble. Were he to do such a thing it would go far to kill his mother worse, it would embitter every moment of the life which remained to her. For a while Elwyn went in deadly fear lest Fanny should tell her husband the truth.
Suddenly Mrs. Elwyn again spoke, but she did not turn round and look tenderly at her son as she had done when speaking of his future wife this time she gazed straight before her: "Is not Winifred a cousin of Mrs. Bellair?" "Yes, there's some kind of connection between the Fanshawes and the Bellairs." Hugh Elwyn tried to make his voice unconcerned, but he failed, and he knew that he had failed.
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