Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing
of the child, which showed that no one was comforting
it, and failing to get any answer to her applications
for admittance, she made bold to enter. There
she saw Lucy, the child in her lap, sitting on the
floor senseless:—she had taken it from
its sleep and tried to follow her husband with it as
her strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.
“Oh my! oh my!” Mrs. Berry moaned, “and
I just now thinkin’ they was so happy!”
Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed
by degrees to revive Lucy, and heard what had brought
her to that situation.
“Go to his father,” said Mrs. Berry.
“Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O! Go, my love,
and every horse in Raynham shall be out after ’m.
This is what men brings us to! Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah!
Or you take blessed baby, and I’ll go.”
The baronet himself knocked at the door. “What
is this?” he said. “I heard a noise
and a step descend.”
“It’s Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin!
have gone from his wife and babe! Rum-te-um-te-iddledy—Oh,
my goodness! what sorrow’s come on us!”
and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried
vehemently, and Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced
him and sang to him with drawn lips and tears dropping
over him. And if the Scientific Humanist to the
day of his death forgets the sight of those two poor
true women jigging on their wretched hearts to calm
the child, he must have very little of the human in
him.
There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.
“His ordeal is over. I have just come from
his room and seen him bear the worst that could be.
Return at once—he has asked for you.
I can hardly write intelligibly, but I will tell you
what we know.
“Two days after the dreadful night when he left
us, his father heard from Ralph Morton. Richard
had fought a duel in France with Lord Mountfalcon,
and was lying wounded at a hamlet on the coast.
His father started immediately with his poor wife,
and I followed in company with his aunt and his child.
The wound was not dangerous. He was shot in the
side somewhere, but the ball injured no vital part.
We thought all would be well. Oh! how sick I
am of theories, and Systems, and the pretensions of
men! There was his son lying all but dead, and
the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had
been guilty of. I could hardly bear the sight
of his composure. I shall hate the name of Science
till the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace
unpretending people!
