Chapter 3

A year passed. It was winter again, and the Gattys had had sickness in their house. Aggie had been ailing ever since the birth of the baby that had succeeded Emmy. And one evening the doctor had to be summoned for little Willie, who had croup. Willie, not four years old, was the last baby but three. Yes, he was only a baby himself; Aggie realized it with anguish, as she undressed him and he lay convulsed on her lap. He was only a baby; and she had left him to run about with Arty and Catty as if he were a big boy. She should have taken more care of Willie.

But the gods took care of Willie, and he was better before the doctor could arrive; and Aggie got all the credit of his cure.

Aggie couldn't believe it. She was convinced the doctor was keeping something from her, he sat so long with Arthur in the dining-room. She could hear their voices booming up the chimney as she mended the fire in the nursery overhead. It was not, she argued, as if he ever cared to talk to Arthur. Nobody ever cared to talk to Arthur long, nor did he care to talk to anybody.

So, when the clock struck seven (the doctor's dinner-hour), and the dining-room door never opened, Aggie's anxiety became terror, and she stole down-stairs. She had meant to go boldly in, and not stand there listening; but she caught one emphatic word that arrested her, and held her there, intent, afraid of her own terror.

"Never!"

She could hear Arthur's weak voice sharpened to a falsetto, as if he, too, were terrified.

"No, never. Never any more!"

There was a note almost of judgment in the doctor's voice; but Aggie could not hear that, for the wild cry that went up in her heart. "Oh, never what? Is Willie--my Willie--never to be well any more!"

Then she listened without a scruple, justified by her motherhood. They were keeping things from her, as they had kept them before. As they had kept them when little Barbara sickened.

"And if--if--" Arthur's voice was weaker this time; it had a sort of moral powerlessness in it; but Aggie's straining ears caught the "if."

"There mustn't be any 'ifs.'"

Aggie's heart struggled in the clutches of her fright.

"That's not what I mean. I mean--is there any danger now?"

"From what I can gather so far, I should say--none."

Aggie's heart gave a great bound of recovery.

"But if," the doctor went on, "as you say--"

"I know" cried Arthur, "you needn't say it. You won't answer for the consequences?"

"I won't. For the consequences, a woman--in the weak state your wife is in--may answer herself--with her life."

Aggie was immensely relieved. So they were only talking about her all the time!

That night her husband told her that her release had come. It had been ordained that she was to rest for two years. And she was to have help. They must have a girl.

"Arthur," she said, firmly, "I won't have a girl. They're worse than charwomen. They eat more; and we can't afford it."

"We _must_ afford it. And oh, another thing--Have you ever thought of the children's education?"

Thought of it? She had thought of nothing else, lying awake at night, waiting for the baby's cry; sitting in the daytime, stitching at the small garments that were always just too small.

"Of course," she said, submissively. She was willing to yield the glory of the idea to him.

"Well," he said, "I don't know how we're going to manage it. One thing I do know--there mustn't be any more of them. I can't afford it."

He had said that before so often that Aggie had felt inclined to tell him that she couldn't afford it, either. But to-night she was silent, for he didn't know she knew. And as she saw that he (who did know) was trying to spare her, she blessed him in her heart.

If he did not tell her everything that the doctor had said, he told her that Willie was all right. Willie had been declared to be a child of powerful health. They weren't to coddle him. As if any one _had_ coddled him! Poor Aggie only wished she had the time.

But now that her release had come, she would have time, and strength, too, for many things that she had had to leave undone. She would get nearer to her children, and to her husband, too. Even at four o'clock in the morning, Aggie had joy in spite of her mortal weariness, as she rocked the sleepless baby on the sad breast that had never suckled him. She told the baby all about it, because she couldn't keep it in.

"My beauty," she murmured, "he will always be my baby. He sha'n't have any little brothers or sisters, never any more. There--there--there, did they--? Hsh-sh-sh, my sweet pet, my lamb. My little king--he shall never be dethroned. Hush, hush, my treasure, or he'll wake his poor Daddy, he will."

In another room, on his sleepless pillow, the baby's father turned and groaned.

All the next day, and the next, Aggie went about with a light step, and with eyes that brightened like a bride's, because of the spring of new love in her heart.

It came over her now how right Arthur had been, how she ought to have kept it up, and how fearfully she had let it go.

Not only the lectures--what did they matter?--but her reading, her music, everything, all the little arts and refinements by which she had once captured Arthur's heart--"Things," she said, "that made all the difference to Arthur." How forbearing and constant he had been!

That evening she dressed her hair and put flowers on the supper-table. Arthur opened his eyes at the unusual appearance, but said nothing. She could see that he was cross about something--something that had occurred in the office, probably. She had never grudged him his outbursts of irritability. It was his only dissipation. Aggie had always congratulated herself on being married to a good man.

Coffee, the beloved luxury they had so long renounced, was served with that supper. But neither of them drank it. Arthur said he wasn't going to be kept awake two nights running, and after that, Aggie's heart was too sore to eat or drink anything. He commented bitterly on the waste. He said he wondered how on earth they were going to pay the doctor's bills, at that rate.

Aggie pondered. He had lain awake all night thinking of the doctor's bills, had he? And yet that was just what they were to have no more of. Anyhow, he had been kept awake; and, of course, that was enough to make him irritable.

So Aggie thought she would soothe him to sleep. She remembered how he used to go to sleep sometimes in the evenings when she played. And the music, she reflected with her bitterness, would cost nothing.

But music, good music, costs more than anything; and Arthur was fastidious. Aggie's fingers had grown stiff, and their touch had lost its tenderness. Of their old tricks they remembered nothing, except to stumble at a "stretchy" chord, a perfect bullfinch of a chord, bristling with "accidentals," where in their youth they had been apt to shy. Arthur groaned.

"Oh, Lord, there won't be a wink of sleep for either of us if you wake that brat again. What on earth possesses you to strum?"

But Aggie was bent, just for the old love of it, and for a little obstinacy, on conquering that chord.

"Oh, stop it!" he cried. "Can't you find something better to do?"

"Yes," said Aggie, trying to keep her mouth from working, "perhaps I could find something."

Arthur looked up at her from under his eyebrows, and was ashamed.

She thought still of what she could do for him; and an inspiration came. He had always loved to listen to her reading. Her voice had not suffered as her fingers had; and there, in its old place on the shelf, was the Browning he had given her.

"Would you like me to read to you?"

"Yes," he said, "if you're not too tired." He was touched by the face he had seen, and by her pathetic efforts; but oh, he thought, if she would only understand.

She seated herself in the old place opposite him, and read from where the book fell open of its own accord.

"'O, lyric Love, half angel and half bird'"--

Her voice came stammering like a child's, choked with tenderness and many memories--

"'And all a wonder and a wild desire--'"

"Oh no, I say, for Heaven's sake, Aggie, not that rot."

"You--you used to like it."

"Oh, I dare say, years ago. I can't stand it now."

"Can't stand it?"

Again he was softened.

"Can't understand it, perhaps, my dear. But it comes to the same thing."

"Yes," said Aggie, "it comes to the same thing."

And she read no more. For the first time, for many years, she understood him.

That night, as they parted, he did not draw her to him and kiss her; but he let her tired head lean towards him, and stroked her hair. Her eyes filled with tears. She laid her forehead on his shoulder.

"Poor Aggie," he said, "poor little woman."

She lifted her head suddenly.

"It's poor you," she whispered, "poor, poor dear."

VIII

"Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going, dearie? When the place is doing you so much good, and Susie back in another week, and all."

Aggie folded up a child's frock with great deliberation, and pressed it, gently but firmly, into the portmanteau.

"I must go," she said, gravely. "Arthur wants me."

Mrs. Purcell was looking on with unfeigned grief at her daughter's preparations for departure. Aggie had gone down to Queningford, not for a flying visit, but to spend the greater part of the autumn. She and Arthur had had to abandon some of the arrangements they had planned together; and, though he had still insisted in general terms on Aggie's two years' rest, the details had been left to her. Thus it happened that a year of the rest-cure had hardly rolled by before Aggie had broken down, in a way that had filled them both with the gravest anxieties for the future. For if she broke down when she was resting, what would she do when the two years were up and things had to be more or less as they were before? Aggie was so frightened this time that she was glad to be packed off to her mother, with Willie and Dick and Emmy and the baby. The "girls," Kate and Eliza, had looked after them, while Aggie lay back in the warm lap of luxury, and rested for once in her life.

All Aggie's visits had ended in the same way. The same letter from home, the same firm and simple statement: "Arthur wants me. I must go," and Aggie was gone before they had had a look at her.

"John and Susie will be quite offended."

"I can't help it. Arthur comes before John and Susie, and he wants me."

She had always been proud of that--his wanting her; his inability to do without her.

"I don't know," she said, "what he _will_ have done without me all this time."

Her mother looked at her sharply, a look that, though outwardly concentrated on Aggie, suggested much inward criticism of Aggie's husband.

"He must learn to do without you," she said, severely.

"I'm not sure that I want him to," said Aggie, and smiled.

Her mother submitted with a heavy heart.

"My dear," she whispered, "if you had married John Hurst we shouldn't have _had_ to say good-bye."

"I wouldn't have taken him from Susie for the world," said Aggie, grimly. She knew that her mother had never liked poor Arthur. This knowledge prevented her from being sufficiently grateful to John for always leaving his trap (the trap that was once to have been hers) at her disposal. It was waiting to take her to the station now.

Aggie had only seen her sister, Mrs. John Hurst, once since they had both married. Whenever Aggie was in Queningford, John and Susie were in Switzerland, on the honeymoon that, for the happy, prosperous couple, renewed itself every year.

This year it was agreed that, when the Hursts came up to Islington for the Grand Horse-Show in the spring, they were to be put up at the Gattys' in Camden Town.

Aggie was excited and a little alarmed at the prospect of this visit. Susie was accustomed to having everything very nice and comfortable about her, and she would be critical of the villa and its ways. And, then, it would be awkward seeing John. She smiled. It always had been awkward seeing John.

But when the spring came a new terror was added to Aggie's hospitable anxiety, a new embarrassment to the general awkwardness of seeing John.

After all, the Hursts put up at a hotel in town. But Susie was to come over for tea and a long talk with Aggie, John following later.

Aggie prepared with many tremors for the meeting with her sister. She made herself quite sick and faint in her long battling with her hair. She had so little time for "doing" it that it had become very difficult to "do" and when it was "done" she said to herself that it looked abominable. Her fingers shook as they strained at the hooks of the shabby gown that was her "best." She had found somewhere a muslin scarf that, knotted and twined with desperate ingenuity, produced something of the effect that she desired.

Up-stairs in the nursery, Catty, very wise for six years old, was minding the baby, while the little nervous maid got tea ready. Aggie sat in the drawing-room waiting for her sister. Even as she waited she dared not be idle. There was an old coat of Arthur's that she had been lining, taking advantage of a change to milder weather; it was warmer than the one he was wearing, and she was afraid to let it go another day lest the wind should turn round to the northeast again. In such anxieties Aggie moved and had her being. For the rest, she had given the little maid a lesson in the proper way of showing Mrs. John Hurst into the room when she arrived.

Mrs. John Hurst arrived a little late. She came in unannounced (for her appearance had taken the little maid's breath away); she came with a certain rustle and sweep which was much more important than anything Susie had ever done in the old days when Aggie was the pretty one.

Aggie was moved at seeing her. She uttered a cry of affection and delight, and gave herself to Susie's open arms.

"Darling!" said Mrs. John Hurst. "Let me have a good look at you."

She kissed her violently, held her at arm's-length for a moment, and then kissed her again, very gently. In that moment Aggie had looked at Susie, and Susie at Aggie, each trying to master the meaning of the other's face. It was Susie who understood first. Prosperity was very becoming to Susie. She was the pretty one now, and she knew it. Marriage had done for her what maidenhood had done for her sister, and Susie was the image of what Aggie used to be.

But Aggie herself! Nothing was left now of the diminutive distinction that had caused her to be once adored in Queningford. Susie was young at two-and-thirty, and Aggie, not three years older, was middle-aged. Not that there were many wrinkles on Aggie's face. Only a deep, crescent line on each side of a mouth that looked as if it had been strained tight with many tortures. It was as if Nature had conceived a grudge against Aggie, and strove, through maternity, to stamp out her features as an individual.

"Oh yes," said Aggie, to break the intolerable tension of that look, "it's one of your old ones, turned and trimmed to make it look different."

"Poor darling," said Susie; but what she thought was that it did look different.

Luckily Mrs. John Hurst was full of the Horse-Show. She could talk of nothing else. It was the Horse-Show that had made her late. She had waited for the judging. John would look in as soon as he could get away. Gownboy had carried off the gold cup and the gold medal again, and the judges had been unjust, as usual, to John (John, grown prosperous, had added horse-breeding to sheep-farming.) Ladslove had only been highly commended. Ladslove was Rosemary's foal.

"You remember Rosemary, Aggie?"

Aggie remembered neither Rosemary nor her foal. But she was sorry for Ladslove. She was grateful to him, too, for holding Susie's attention and diverting it from all the things she didn't want her to see. She was afraid of Susie; afraid of her sympathy; afraid of her saying something about Barbara (_she_ couldn't speak of little Bessie, Susie's only child, who had died three years ago). Above all, she was afraid of Susie's inquisitive tongue and searching eyes.

She flung herself into fictitious reminiscences of the Queningford stud. She couldn't have done worse.

"Oh, Aggie," said her sister, "you _do_ mix them up so."

"Well," said poor Aggie, "there are so many of them, I can't keep count."

"Never mind, dear." Aggie's words recalled Susie to her sisterly duties. "I haven't asked after the children yet. How many are there? _I_ can't keep count, either, you know."

Aggie turned away, found the old coat she had been lining, and spread it on her lap. Susie's eye roamed and rested on the coat, and Aggie's followed it.

"Do excuse my going on with this. Arthur wants it."

Susie smiled in recognition of the familiar phrase. Ever since he had first appeared in Queningford, Arthur had always been wanting something. But, as she looked at the poor coat, she reflected that one thing he had never wanted, or had never asked for, and that was help.

"Aggie," she said, "I do hope that if you ever want a little help, dear, you'll come to me."

Susie, preoccupied with the idea of liberality, could not see that she had chosen her moment badly. Her offer, going as it did, hand-in-hand with her glance, reflected upon Arthur.

"I don't want any help, thank you," said Aggie. "Arthur's doing very well now. Very well, indeed."

"Then," said Susie, "why on earth do you break your back over that stitching, if there's no need? That's not my notion of economy."

Susie was a kind-hearted woman, but eight years of solid comfort and prosperity had blunted her perceptions. Moreover, she had an earnestly practical mind, a mind for which material considerations outweighed every other.

"My dear Susie, your notion of economy would be the same as mine, if you had had seven children."

"But I haven't," said Susie, sadly. She was humbled by the rebuff she had just received. "I only wish I had."

Aggie looked up from her work with a remorseful tenderness in her tired eyes. She was sorry for poor Susie, who had lost her only one.

But Susie had already regretted her momentary weakness, and her pride was up. She was a primitive woman, and had always feared lest reproach should lie upon her among the mothers of many children. Besides, she had never forgotten that her John had loved Aggie first. Aggie, with her seven children, should not set her down as a woman slighted by her husband.

"I haven't had the strength for it," said she; and Aggie winced. "The doctor told John I mustn't have more than the one. And I haven't."

Poor Aggie hardened her face before Susie's eyes, for she felt that they were spying out and judging her. And Susie, seeing that set look, remembered how badly Aggie had once behaved to her John. Therefore she was tempted to extol him.

"But then," said she, magnificently, "I have my husband." (As if Aggie hadn't hers!) "Nobody knows what John is but me. Do you know, there hasn't been one unkind word passed between us, nor one cross look, ever since he married me eight years ago."

"There are very few who can say that." Aggie tried to throw a ring of robust congratulation into her flat tones.

"Very few. But there's no one like him."

"No one like you, either, I should say."

"Well, for him there isn't. He's never had eyes for any one but me--never."

Aggie cast down her eyes demurely at that. She had no desire to hurt Susie by reminding her of the facts. But Susie, being sensitive on the subject, had provided for all that.

"Of course, dear, I know, just at first, he thought of you. A fancy. He told me all about it; and how you wouldn't have him, _he_ said. He said he didn't think you thought him gentle enough. That shows how much you knew about him, my dear."

"I should always have supposed," said Aggie, coldly, "he would be gentle to any one he cared for."

She knew, and Susie knew, she had supposed the very opposite; but she wished Susie to understand that John had been rejected with full realization of his virtues, because, good as he was, somebody else was still better. So that there might be no suspicion of regret.

"Gentle? Why, Aggie, if that was what you wanted, he's as gentle as a woman. Gentler--there aren't many women, I can tell you, who have the strength that goes with that."

Aggie bent her head lower yet over her work. She thought she could see in Susie's speech a vindictive and critical intention. All the time she had, Aggie thought, been choosing her words judicially, so that each unnecessary eulogy of John should strike at some weak spot in poor Arthur. She felt that Susie was not above paying off her John's old scores by an oblique and cowardly blow at the man who had supplanted him. She wished that Susie would either leave off talking about John, or go.

But Susie still interpreted Aggie's looks as a challenge, and the hymn of praise swelled on.

"My dear--if John wasn't an angel of goodness and unselfishness--When I think how useless I am to him, and of all that he has done for me, and all that he has given up--"

Aggie was trembling. She drew up the coat to shelter her.

"--why it makes my blood boil to think that any one should know him, and not know what he is."

Aggie dropped the coat in her agitation. As she stooped to pick it up, Susie put out an anxious arm to help her.

Their eyes met.

"Oh, Aggie, dear--" said Susie. It was all she _could_ say. And her voice had in it consternation and reproach.

But Aggie faced her.

"Well?" she said, steadily.

"Oh, nothing--" It was Susie's turn for confusion. "Only you said--and we thought--after what you've been told--"

"What was I told?"

Horror overcame Susie, and she lost her head.

"Weren't you told, then?"

Her horror was reflected in her sister's eyes. But Aggie kept calm.

"Susie" she said, "what do you mean? That I wasn't told of the risk? Is that what you meant?"

"Oh, Aggie--" Susie was helpless. She could not say what she had meant, nor whether she had really meant it.

"Who _should_ be told if I wasn't? Surely I was the proper person?"

Susie recovered herself. "Of course, dear, of course you were."

"Well?" Aggie forced the word again through her tight, strained lips.

"I'm not blaming you, Aggie, dear. I know it isn't your fault."

"Whose is it, then?"

Susie's soft face hardened, and she said nothing.

Her silence lay between them; silence that had in it a throbbing heart of things unutterable; silence that was an accusation, a judgment of the man that Aggie loved.

Then Aggie turned, and in her immortal loyalty she lied.

"I never told him."

"Never told him? Oh, my dear, you were very wrong."

"Why should I? He was ill. It would have worried him. It worried me less to keep it to myself."

"But--the risk?"

"Oh," said Aggie, sublimely, "we all take it. Some of us don't know. I did. That's all."

She drew a deep breath of relief and satisfaction. For four months, ever since she had known that some such scene as this must come, she had known that she would meet it this way.

"Hush," she said. "I think I hear the children."

IX

They came in, a pathetic little procession, three golden-haired couples, holding one another's hands.

First, Arty and Emmy, then Catty and Baby, then Willie and Dick, all solemn and shy. Baby turned his back on the strange aunt and burrowed into his mother's lap. They were all silent but Dick. Dick wanted to know if his Auntie liked birfdays, and if people gave her fings on her birfday--pausing to simulate a delicate irrelevance before he announced that _his_ birfday was to-morrow.

"Dickie, dear," said his mother, nervously, "we don't talk about our birthdays before they've come."

She could not bear Susie to be able to say that one of her children had given so gross a hint.