‘You’re a Doll, Daisy!’ Chapter Eight — In Which Sir Charles Learns Half the Truth.
The doctor, though deeply unamiable, was, if we were to weigh the sum of his learning, a man of sense, though not sensibility. It is, therefore, that Daisy did not doubt the man when he determined that life was still present in her husband.
A prevailing goodness in her heart made it impossible that she should be anything but relieved to hear that her husband was not dead. It had been a naturally good thought, and Daisy was pleased with her ability to think good things when her circumstances ought to excite musings of a more selfish and sinister genre. Sir Charles was not even very ill; his fall, so the doctor said, was likely a deliquium brought about through the combined effects of liquor and fatigue.
Taking in the prospect of her husband, who now rested, half-sleeping in her bed, our heroine had begun to feel that her evening of trial was over. Of course, it was not. Mrs Prudence, in a flutter of agitated fury with the tyrant baronet and feeling that the physician had shewed too much sympathy for the old man, put herself upon exposing his impolite behaviour to the doctor. ‘Sure, my master will not tell you,’ began she, sitting at the bedside, ‘that he fell from chasing his poor wife about her bedroom! Thank Heavens that his punishment was served so quickly before he frightened my poor lady to death. Drink will make a devil of any husband!’
‘And what, sir, do you mean by this?’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Why was the lady being chased about her room?’
Everyone looked at Sir Charles. The lightly bobbing head and closed eyes continued their sleeping appearance, and it seemed, after a moment, that he had not heard the question to answer it. Daisy was not displeased and, being very tired herself, hoped that would be the end of the doctor’s inquisition. ‘Because she was not offering what a wife ought to give,’ answered Mrs Prudence with a sour tone that left no clarity for determining whether it was Daisy’s reluctance or Sir Charles’ demand that was causing the offence.
‘Good God, sir!’ decried the doctor, standing to tower by the bedside. ‘And do you think to carry on this way when your wife’s condition is so delicate? May I recommend, sir, for the sake of your wife and child, that you leave her be till she is brought to the delivery bed and at least a month or so after that! Or I verily believe you will hunt her to death!’
This doctor had correctly assumed that the large, gallant stepson was the actual father of this child. Yet, it had also been his assumption, and an incorrect one, that Daisy’s child would be disguised as this stepson’s sibling. Being a man of conscience, the doctor would have happily outed the vile lovers the day he comprehended their awful affair, but two hundred pounds from Tom and a penchant for imprudent romance novels convinced him to take a role in this theatre of conspiracy. The doctor did not consider that Sir Charles would not know that his wife was pregnant at all.
Still a little in his cups and confused from the shock of his fall, Sir Charles first laughed, confused and hardly comprehending what he had heard. He might never have comprehended it and fallen instantly to sleep again had not Mrs Prudence, turning her eyes to Daisy’s fear-struck face, exclaimed loudly, ‘Lord help us! Sure, my master did not know a thing of my lady’s pregnancy till now. And for good reason too! Till tonight, he has made no eyes for the girl in two or three years. Lord help us! To be sure, I said the truth would out, did not I, my lady?’ Wringing her hands, Mrs Prudence found yet more to say on the matter. ‘I have told my lady that she has acted the part of a vile and wicked slut, and her punishment would come harsh and painful. You are beyond my help now, to be sure you are!’
Sir Charles opened his eyes. The doctor looked at Sir Charles, Sir Charles looked at Prudence, and Prudence continued to talk obstinately at Daisy. Our heroine did not hear a word more of this rebuke; her ears were too full with the sound of her terror-stricken heart. Daisy did not hear a word, that was, till her husband, having regained his faculties, ordered the doctor and Mrs Prudence from the room.
He spoke to his wife, who had found herself, moments earlier, fallen prostrate at the feet of her husband. Sir Charles stood furiously above her, ‘If you wish to live,’ said he in a voice sharp and quiet, ‘you will give me his name.’
That Daisy, who was caught in her betrayal of the most merciless of husbands, might have any cause to feel happy at this moment, seems to be impossible. And yet, it was when her husband asked her to name the offending father that our fearful heroine realised only she had been betrayed by the doctor and Mrs Prudence and not Tom.
Her passionate love for Tom might have induced her to own to Sir Charles that his own son was the child’s father. Yet her thoughts, in this moment of crisis, turned to pragmatism. Tom, she considered quickly, with her face hidden against the coarse fibres of the rug beneath her, had not yet brought his pecuniary affairs into order, and she did not know what control Sir Charles could exert over his son’s fortune if he was so provoked.
Besides this, she knew that if Sir Charles discovered Tom was the culprit, he would be inspired to enact the most awful revenge; this she did not doubt. They would be obliged to flee continually, that is, if she and Tom managed to ever escape. For Tom’s sake, for her sake and for the sake of their child, it was necessary to denounce her lover and blame another. There was only one name of any plausibility.
‘Captain Fielding,’ said she, barely lifting her head from the floor. ‘The child belongs to Captain George Fielding.’
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