Gradually she had resumed cognizance of her household, perceiving that it was demoralized from top to bottom, and that when the time came to begin upon it she would not be able to settle where to begin, even supposing that the baby were not there to monopolize her attention. The task appalled her. Then she wanted to get up. Then she got up. What a blow to self-confidence! She went back to bed like a little scared rabbit to its hole, glad, glad to be on the soft pillows again. She said: “Yet the time must come when I shall be downstairs, and walking about and meeting people, and cooking and superintending the millinery.” Well, it did come—except that she had to renounce the millinery to Miss Insull—but it was not the same. No, different! The baby pushed everything else on to another plane. He was a terrific intruder; not one minute of her old daily life was left; he made no compromise whatever. If she turned away her gaze from him he might pop off into eternity and leave her.
And now she was calmly and sensibly giving him suck in presence of Miss Insull. She was used to his importance, to the fragility of his organism, to waking twice every night, to being fat. She was strong again. The convulsive twitching that for six months had worried her repose, had quite disappeared. The state of being a mother was normal, and the baby was so normal that she could not conceive the house without him.
All in ten months!
When the baby was installed in his cot for the night, she came downstairs and found Miss Insull and Samuel still working, and Larder than ever, but at addition sums now. She sat down, leaving the door open at the foot of the stairs. She had embroidery in hand: a cap. And while Miss Insull and Samuel combined pounds, shillings, and pence, whispering at great speed, she bent over the delicate, intimate, wasteful handiwork, drawing the needle with slow exactitude. Then she would raise her head and listen.
“Excuse me,” said Miss Insull, “I think I hear baby crying.”
“And two are eight and three are eleven. He must cry,” said Mr. Povey, rapidly, without looking up.
The baby’s parents did not make a practice of discussing their domestic existence even with Miss Insull; but Constance had to justify herself as a mother.
“I’ve made perfectly sure he’s comfortable,” said Constance. “He’s only crying because he fancies he’s neglected. And we think he can’t begin too early to learn.”
“How right you are!” said Miss Insull. “Two and carry three.”
That distant, feeble, querulous, pitiful cry continued obstinately. It continued for thirty minutes. Constance could not proceed with her work. The cry disintegrated her will, dissolved her hard sagacity.
Without a word she crept upstairs, having carefully deposed the cap on her rocking chair.
Mr. Povey hesitated a moment and then bounded up after her, startling Fan. He shut the door on Miss Insull, but Fan was too quick for him. He saw Constance with her hand on the bedroom door.
“My dear girl,” he protested, holding himself in. “Now what are you going to do?”
“I’m just listening,” said Constance.
“Do be reasonable and come downstairs.”
He spoke in a low voice, scarcely masking his nervous irritation, and tiptoed along the corridor towards her and up the two steps past the gas-burner. Fan followed, wagging her tail expectant.
“Suppose he’s not well?” Constance suggested.
“Pshaw!” Mr. Povey exclaimed contemptuously. “You remember what happened last night and what you said!”
They argued, subduing their tones to the false semblance of goodwill, there in the closeness of the corridor. Fan, deceived, ceased to wag her tail and then trotted away. The baby’s cry, behind the door, rose to a mysterious despairing howl, which had such an effect on Constance’s heart that she could have walked through fire to reach the baby. But Mr. Povey’s will held her. And she rebelled, angry, hurt, resentful. Common sense, the ideal of mutual forbearance, had winged away from that excited pair. It would have assuredly ended in a quarrel, with Samuel glaring at her in black fury from the other side of a bottomless chasm, had not Miss Insull most surprisingly burst up the stairs.
Mr. Povey turned to face her, swallowing his emotion.
“A telegram!” said Miss Insull. “The postmaster brought it down himself—”
“What? Mr. Derry?” asked Samuel, opening the telegram with an affectation of majesty.
“Yes. He said it was too late for delivery by rights. But as it seemed very important …”
Samuel scanned it and nodded gravely; then gave it to his wife. Tears came into her eyes.
“I’ll get Cousin Daniel to drive me over at once,” said Samuel, master of himself and of the situation.
“Wouldn’t it be better to hire?” Constance suggested. She had a prejudice against Daniel.
Mr. Povey shook his head. “He offered,” he replied. “I can’t refuse his offer.”
“Put your thick overcoat on, dear,” said Constance, in a dream, descending with him.
“I hope it isn’t—” Miss Insull stopped.
“Yes it is, Miss Insull,” said Samuel, deliberately.
In less than a minute he was gone.
Constance ran upstairs. But the cry had ceased. She turned the doorknob softly, slowly, and crept into the chamber. A night-light made large shadows among the heavy mahogany and the crimson, tasselled rep in the close-curtained room. And between the bed and the ottoman (on which lay Samuel’s newly-bought family Bible) the cot loomed in the shadows. She picked up the night-light and stole round the bed. Yes, he had decided to fall asleep. The hazard of death afar off had just defeated his devilish obstinacy. Fate had bested him. How marvellously soft and delicate that tear-stained cheek! How frail that tiny, tiny clenched hand! In Constance grief and joy were mystically united.
II
The drawing room was full of visitors, in frocks of ceremony. The old drawing room, but newly and massively arranged with the finest Victorian furniture from dead Aunt Harriet’s
