She had risen to her feet and was gazing at him with a sort of averse amazement, once more pale and agitated, and with a strange difficulty of articulation. “Why, Edward, what do you mean? Why should you want to get me out of the country? There’s something behind all this, evidently.” She noted that he winced by so slight a token as the flicker of an eyelash. “You know that I would not consent to go without my child for any earthly consideration.”
“I know no such thing, as I have told you,” he retorted hotly. “The arrangements are all made. Your passage is taken. I have ready your letter of credit. I do think you are the most ungrateful wretch alive,” he exclaimed, his eyes aglow with anger. “A beautiful and costly trip, that you have longed for, planned out for you in every detail, and you----” he broke off with a gesture of repudiation.
“I wouldn’t be separated from my child for one night for all the jauntings about the globe that could be devised,” she declared.
Floyd-Rosney suddenly lost all self-control. “Well, you certainly will be separated from him for one night--for many nights,--for he is gone!”
“Gone?” She sprang forward with a shriek and started toward the door. Then with a desperate effort to compose herself she paused even in the attitude of flight. “For God’s sake, Edward, where has he gone? What do you mean?”
“He has been sent to the place where I propose to have him cared for in your absence. Knowing that your time is short I tried to smooth the way.”
“Where you shall not know,--you shall not follow. You may as well make up your mind to take the trip.”
She seemed taller, to tower, as she drew herself up in her wrath, standing on the threshold in the ghastly incongruity of her festival evening gown and her tragic face. “Oh, you brute!” she shrilled at him. “You fiend!”
Then she turned and fled through the great square hall and up the massive staircase to the nursery that she had quitted so lately, that had been so full of cheer and cosy comfort and infantile laughter and caresses.
The room was empty now. The fire was low in the grate, seen through the bars of the high fender that kept the little fellow from danger of contact with the flames. The dull, spiritless, red glow of the embers enabled her to discern the switch to turn on the electric light, and instantly the apartment sprang into keen visibility. The bed was vacant, the coverlets disarranged where the child had been taken thence, doubtless after he had fallen asleep. The drawers of the bureau, the doors of the wardrobe stood ajar, the receptacles ransacked of all his little garments, his hats and shoes. Evidently a trunk had been packed in view of a prolonged absence while she had sat downstairs in the library, all unconscious of the machinations in progress against her in her own home. She was numb with the realization of the tremendous import of the situation. She could not understand the motive--she only perceived the fact. It was her husband’s scheme to get her out of the country, and he had fancied that he could force her to go without her child. She took no account of her grief, her fears, the surging anguish of separation. She was saying to herself as she turned into her own room adjoining that she must be strong in this crisis for the child’s sake, as well as her own. She must discern clearly, and reason accurately, and act promptly and without vacillation. If she should remain here she might be seized and on some pretext coerced into leaving the country on that lovely trip which he had planned for her. She burst into a sudden bitter laugh, and the sound startled her into silence again. When had her husband ever planned aught for her save to serve some purpose of his own? She would not go--she would not, she said over and over to herself. Her determination, her instinct were to ascertain where the child had been hidden, and if possible to capture him; if not to be near, on the chance of seeing him sometimes, to watch over him, to guard him from danger. In her self-pity at this poor hope the tears welled up and she shook with sobs. But on this momentary collapse ensued renewed strength. It might be, she thought, she could appeal to the law. She knew that her husband’s was the superior claim to the child, but in view of his tender years, his delicate health in certain respects, might not a court grant his custody to his mother? At all events his restoration to her care was henceforward her one object, and if she allowed herself to be forced out of the country, to serve this unknown, unimagined whim of her cruel husband’s, she might never see the child again.