the baby is on the way, and asked me to come along and collect you. If you're ready, I suggest we go immediately.'
His manner was calm and reassuring. Good old Tom, thought Henry; what a stand-by he was at all times! The best friend in the world. He had got the man at the hotel to collect his luggage; it was waiting strapped in the hall. He scribbled a note making his excuses to his fellow magistrates on the bench, and they left the city.
'The children have been spending the day at Heathmount,' said Tom, 'helping to make jam in the kitchen.
All in a delightful mess and very happy. We've arranged for them to spend the night, or two or three nights, if necessary.'
'I don't suppose the business will be long, if you say it has already started,' said Henry. 'Kitty was not long coming into the world, as far as I can remember.'
'It does not always follow, old boy,' said Tom; 'that was six or seven years ago, and Katherine hasn't been too fit since, has she?
Still, this young doctor seems a capable fellow.
Old Armstrong insists on being present too, by the way. More from affection for you all than anything else.'
'Well, he brought all of us into the world,' said Henry. 'He probably knows a thing or two about it by this time.'
It was nearly eleven o'clock when they arrived home at Clonmere. Uncle Willie Armstrong had heard the sound of the carriage, and was standing waiting for them on the steps.
'Glad to see you, Henry,' he said, in his usual gruff, abrupt manner. 'Young McKay is with Katherine now. Nothing much happened since you left, Rector. You had both better have a drink.
We can't any of us do anything to hurry this child into the world.'
He led the way into the dining-room.
'I shall go up and see Katherine,' said Henry, but old Armstrong took him by the shoulder.
'Much better not,' he said; 'she'd far rather see you when it's all over. They've laid some cold supper for you here. You'd better eat it.'
Henry found himself surprisingly hungry. Cold beef and pickles. Apricot tart.
'Come on, Tom,' he said, 'my wife's having this baby, not yours. Don't look so solemn.'
He began to tell them an amusing incident that had happened in court during the afternoon. They listened and smiled, not saying much. Old Doctor Armstrong puffed away at his pipe. Presently Doctor McKay came into the room.
'Well 8? said Henry. 'How is she 8?
'Rather tired,' said the doctor. 'It's being something of an ordeal for her, but she is very patient. I wonder…' He glanced across at Armstrong. 'I wonder if you would care to come upstairs with me?'
The old doctor rose from his chair without a word and followed him out of the room.
'You would think,' said Henry, 'that by this time someone would have invented an easier way for these things to happen.
Why can't the damn fellows do something? She can't surfer all this pain for hours on end.' He began pacing up and down the room. 'My mother had all five of us and never winked an eyelid,' he said.
'She used to sit up and do embroidery five minutes afterwards, and give all the servants notice.'
He stopped and listened a moment, and then went on walking again.
'Uncle Willie looks at me all the time with a resigned T told you so' expression in his eye,' he said impatiently. 'I remember his telling me only last year that Katherine should never have any more children… He had an idea she had got something twisted inside. Katherine never said anything.
She has seemed quite happy about it all. Women are so strange…? He hesitated on one foot, looking at the door, 'Shall I go upstairs?' he said.
'I don't think I would, if I were you,' said Tom gently.
'I can't go on standing here,' said Henry. 'I think I shall go through and walk round the new house.'
He lifted a small lamp, and passed through the door in the dining-room that led into the new corridor between the two wings. There was a smell of paint and varnish. The workmen were busy this week on the panelling in the new dining-room. He held the lamp above his head and went through into the great hall. It looked very massive, very bare. The light shone down from the vast skylight in the roof. The place seemed ghostly, grey, and the wide staircase leading to the gallery yawned like a gulf.
'It will be all right,' he thought, 'when we have it furnished. A big fire in the open hearth, chairs, sofas, tables, and Katherine's piano in the corner here.'
He wandered about the empty rooms, his footsteps making a hollow sound. Once he stumbled against a ladder and some pots of paint. There was a little heap of cement in a corner of the drawing-room. The room struck very cold, and air blew in, dank and chill. He turned and went up the great stairs to the gallery above. The children had been playing there. One of them had left a skipping-rope trailing from the top of the stairs. He wandered through his new dressing-room to the bedroom. The paint smell clung about him still.
He wished the room could have been finished in time for Katherine to have had her baby there. Then she could have been carried through to the boudoir and spent her days on the sofa, returning to the bedroom at night. He stood on the threshold of the boudoir. Even now, bare and empty, there was something snug about it, a foretaste of the future. Perhaps because they had planned so much of it together. He turned the handle of the long window, and stepped out on to the balcony. A little wind blew towards him from the sea. He could hear the tide ripple in the creek below. His lamp flickered and went out.
He had to grope his way back in the darkness, through the dark, silent rooms, along the gallery, down the great stairs to the hall. There were shadows everywhere, and the caps and overalls of the workmen, hanging just inside an open door, were like the dangling bodies of men. He tried to picture the new wing as it would be, finished and complete, the carpets on the stairs, the pictures on the walls, the fires burning, and for the first time the image forsook him, his imagination failed.
He tried to see Katherine sitting in the corner of the hall, pouring out tea, with the children beside her, the dogs lying on the floor, and himself coming in from shooting, with old Tom perhaps, and Herbert, and Edward, and Katherine glancing up smiling. And he could not see her. He could not see any of them. There was nothing but this vast, unfinished, empty hall.
'Henry,' said a voice, 'Henry…?
Tom came searching for him from the old house, peering through the darkness.
'Armstrong came down for you,' he said, 'he wants to speak to you.'
Henry followed him, blinking in the sudden light.
The door between the two wings closed behind him with a clang. He could hear the sound of it echoing through the new wing that had been shut away.
'What's happened?' he said. 'Is it over yet?'
Old Armstrong watched him from under shaggy brows.
He seemed old and tired.
'A daughter,' he said, 'not very strong, I'm afraid. She'll need a lot of looking after.
Katherine is very weak. You had better go up.'
Henry glanced from one to the other, his friend, and the friend of his father.
'Yes,' he said, 'yes, I'll go to her.'
He ran swiftly up the stairs and met the young Doctor McKay coming along the passage.
'Don't stay long,' the doctor said, 'she's very tired. I want her to sleep. '
Henry looked into his eyes.
'What do you mean?' he said. 'Isn't everything going to be all right?'
The young doctor watched him steadily.
'Your wife is not strong, Mr. Brodrick,' he said. 'This has been a very great strain upon her.
If she sleeps, all may be well, but I cannot promise. I think it right that you should know this.'
Henry did not answer. He went on looking at the doctor's eyes.
'Armstrong told you about the little girl?' the doctor said. 'I'm afraid she's malformed, one foot not quite straight, and rather underweight, but otherwise all right. There's no reason why she should not be as healthy as the
