Part 28 (1/2)

Something wider, more ma.s.sive, infinitely grander, is coming to us, if we will wait patiently.

She sat motionless until all the congregation had dispersed; and when she left the church, there was an expression of gravity on her face and a sense of contentment in her heart. At the sight of some children romping by the church-yard railings, she smiled. A boy pushed a girl with mirthful vigorousness, and she spoke to him gently.

”Don't be rough, little boy. Take care, and don't hurt her--even in play.”

Then she gave the children ”silver sixpences to buy sweeties,” and went slowly down the court. She could think kindly and benignantly of all the world. There was not a tinge of bitterness remaining when she thought of her husband.

As she lay in bed one morning after a night of dreamless sleep, a chance word dropped by Yates set her lazily thinking of the last date on which she had suffered from those normal and not accidental fluctuations of energy that are produced by periodically recurrent causes. Beginning to count the weeks, she fancied that some error of memory was confusing her--time of late had moved with such heavy feet; what seemed long was really short in the story of her days. Then she began to count the days, trying to make fixed points, and laboriously filling the gaps that intervened. Then she stopped counting and thinking.

Yates had gone out of the room, and she lay quite still, with relaxed limbs and slackened respiration.

And her mind seemed dull and void, though wonder stirred and thrilled.

It was like dawn in a hill-girt valley--black darkness mingling with silver mist; shadows growing thin, but not retreating; the ribbed sides of the mountains very slowly becoming more and more solidly stupendous, but refusing to disclose the details of their form or colour, although, beyond the vast ramparts with which they aid the night, the sun is surely rising. Not till the sun bursts in fire above the eastern wall does the day begin.

So, with flooding golden light, the splendid hope came to her.

She waited for a few more days. There was no mistake; she knew that she had counted correctly; but she pretended to herself that she must allow a wide margin to cover the contingency of miscalculation.

Then she spoke of the facts to Yates, after extracting a solemn vow of secrecy. Yates said they could draw only one conclusion from the facts; it was impossible to doubt--but they would know for certain next time.

They must count again; and, after allowing another wide margin, settle the approaching date which would infallibly confirm their hopes or cruelly dissipate them.

For a little while longer, then, she must keep her splendid secret.

Her heart was overflowing with a joy such as she had thought she could never feel again. And with the warm stream of bliss there were gus.h.i.+ng fountains of grat.i.tude. She will forgive her husband everything, because he has crowned her life with this ineffable glory.

It justifies her marriage; in a manner more perfect than she had dared to imagine, it gives her back her youth. All mothers at the cradle have one age--the age of motherhood. And irresistibly it will win his respect and love--some love must come for the mother of his babe.

Although she was waiting with so much anxiety until the second significant epoch should be pa.s.sed, she found that time glided by her now easily and swiftly. Yates--the wise old spinster--a.s.suming in a more marked degree that air of matronly authority that she had worn before the wedding, told her of the vital importance of taking good rest, good nourishment, and good cheerful views regarding the future.

So she often lay upon the sofa in her room--resting,--smiling and dreaming. She had no real doubt now. It was miraculous, glorious, true.

She thought of the many symptoms that she had noticed but never considered, so that the revelation of their meaning brought the same glad surprise as to a young and innocent bride. She might have guessed.--The dreadful instability of nerves; longings for the widest outlet of physical effort, alternating with weak horrors of the slightest task; and, above all, the facile tears always springing to her eyes--these things, in one who by habit was firm of purpose and who wept with difficulty, should have been promptly recognized as unfailing signs of her condition. Lesser signs, too, had not been wanting--the vagrant fancies, the mental ups and downs which correspond with the changed states of the body; and she groped in the dim past, comparing her recent sensations and reveries with those experienced twenty-three years ago, before the birth of Enid. She might have guessed.--But truly perhaps she had been too humble of spirit ever to prepare herself for the admission of so proud a thought. Even in the brightly coloured dreams from which realities had so rudely awakened her, she was not advancing towards so triumphant an apotheosis.

But no morning sickness! Not yet. It will begin later this time--for the second child; and it will not be so bad. That first time--when poor Enid was coming into the world--she was but a slip of a girl; depressed by heavy care; worn out by the watchings and nursings of her mother's illness. But now everything was and would be different. She possessed robust and long-established health; her husband was a magnificently strong man; their child would be a most n.o.ble gorgeous creature.

And each time that she thought thus of the child's father, the fountain springs of her intense grat.i.tude rose and gushed higher and broader. She was only vaguely conscious of the extent of the revulsion of her feelings where he was concerned. The change seemed so natural and so little mysterious that she did not measure it. With the awakening of the new hopes, there had arisen a new love for him--a love purged of all impurities.

This was the real love--wide-reaching sympathy, infinite tenderness; the love that can understand all and forgive all; the instinct of protection blending with the instinct of submission; the maternal feeling extending beyond the unborn child to its creator--making them both her children.

One day when he said he wanted to ask her a favour, she told him, before he added another word, that she felt sure she would grant the favour.

She was reading, in the drawing-room; and she slipped the book under the cus.h.i.+on of the sofa, and looked up at him with an expectant smile.

Then, showing some slight embarra.s.sment, he explained that he had been ”outrunning the constable.”

All the arrangements of the partners.h.i.+p were formally settled; nothing had been overlooked by clever Mr. Prentice; everything was cut and dried; certain proportionately fixed sums were to be pa.s.sed from time to time to the private credit of each partner; and then at the appointed seasons, when the true profits of the firm had been ascertained, amounts making up the balance of earned income would be paid over. All the usual precautions, and some that perhaps were rather unusual, had been adopted in order to prevent the partners from antic.i.p.ating profits by premature drafts upon the funds of the firm. But now, as Marsden explained, he had exhausted his private account and was in sad need of a little ready to keep him going.

She instantly agreed to give him the money--with the pleasure a too indulgent mother might feel in giving to a spendthrift son.

Extravagance--what is it? Only one of those faults of youth by which the thoughtless young culprits endear themselves to their elderly guardians.