Part 2

"Two friends of mine have a lovely little place in Hertfordshire. She--Sybel--takes a great delight in her garden, particularly in growing roses. They had one tiny girl of four years old, rightly named Angela--the sweetest little angel-child I ever beheld. I ran down to them for one night last June. Sybel and I were having tea in the garden, close to a magnificent white rose-tree, a mass of fragrant bud and blossom. Sybel was very proud of it. Presently we heard little dancing feet down the gravel path behind us, and the baby-girl appeared. She stood gravely contemplating us at tea, not asking for anything. Sybel is a great disciplinarian. Suddenly the baby eyes fell upon the rose-tree, and a wistful look of longing passed into them. She drew close to Sybel and looked pleadingly up into her face. 'Oh, mummie, they are _so_ lubly! May I pick one of your roses?' 'Certainly not,' said Sybel. 'How often am I to tell you, baby, that you are never to pick flowers in the garden! Run along to nurse, and don't be troublesome.'

"The baby said no more, but I saw the little mouth droop and quiver. The small feet trailed slowly away over the grass, all the dance gone out of them, and Sybel gave me a long dissertation on the bringing up of children and the importance of checking their natural tendency to destructiveness, my only reply being, I am afraid, 'What on earth is the good of a garden full of flowers if your own baby can't gather and enjoy them!' To which Sybel made answer: 'It is just as well, my dear Jane, that you remain unmarried. You would hopelessly spoil your children if you had any.'

"With that we laughed and ceased sparring; for Sybel is a good sort and was a devoted mother, provided her little child pleased her in all things."

The baby's godmother paused a moment, as if mentally reviewing a scene and seeking for words in which to describe it. Then she leaned forward, with her arms upon her knees and her hands clasped in front of her, and as she spoke, slowly and quietly, she kept her eyes fixed upon those firmly folded hands.

"Three weeks later I was wired for, to go back there and comfort a despairing, childless mother.

"When poor Sybel took me up to see the little body, it lay upon the bed, smothered in white roses--roses in the little hands, roses round the tiny feet, snowy petals framing the baby face, now whiter than the whitest rose. When I saw them, and when poor Sybel fell on her knees at the foot of the little bed and moaned in anguish of heart, I knew why she had sent for me.

"'Oh, Jane,' she said, 'Jane! You remember. She wanted _one_ white rose, _just one_, and I would not let her have it. Oh, my baby, my baby!'

"'Sybel, dear,' I said helplessly, 'she has them all now.'

"'_Now!_' cried Sybel, in the most fearful accents of despair. 'What good is it _now?_ Ten thousand roses strewn about her now are not worth the one gathered by her own little hand when she wanted it, which would have given her pleasure then. Too late! Too late! Oh, God, the wheels of time! Will they never move backward? Shall I never hear again my baby's voice saying, "Mummie, may I pick one of your roses?" Oh, baby, speak to poor mummie and say you know you may have them all!'

"But the little angel-face was calmly unresponsive, and the tiny marble hands so lightly clasped the rose stems that when the mother's desperate weeping shook the bed, the roses those baby hands seemed holding, dropped from them and fell, unheeded.

"Ah, poor breaking heart! Love's offering came too late."

The baby's godmother still kept her eyes on her folded hands. The doctor's wife was crying softly.

"Oh, Flower," the deep, sad voice went on, "we are all apt to make the same terrible mistake. When our dear ones have passed beyond all ken of earthly pleasures, we send our costly wreaths of rarest flowers, striving thus to atone for having denied them the one simple blossom which was all they asked and needed. Let us learn to give our flowers now--now while they can hold them and have them; now, while they can scent their perfume and enjoy their beauty. Oh, child, give Deryck his white rose while he asks it of you. A man requires the instant fulfillment of his heart's desires. We women can wait. Some of us enjoy the idea of waiting even for the wreaths and crosses, though we shall not be there to see them. The morbid picturesqueness of the idea appeals to us; but a man wants nothing for his cold clay save six feet of honest earth. His needs are stronger, simpler, more intense than ours. And what he needs, he needs now. When the battle is over and won, he will leave the old suit of armor behind and forge ahead to pastures new. Stand by him now, in the din, the dust, and the heat, with the cup of cold water he craves. And oh, remember, the wheels of time go forward, always; backward, never. I want you to be spared the agony of vain regret."

The baby's godmother ceased speaking and looked up. The lines were hard and stern about her mouth and eyes, but the eyes themselves were soft and infinitely tender.

Flower rose and, stooping, kissed her gently.

"I wish he _had_ proposed to you," she said; "you would have done better for him. But as it was I he wanted, I must do my best, and I will go to Brighton."

Then slowly, with bent head, she left the room.

The baby's godmother sat lost in thought for many minutes. It had cost her much to say what she had said, and she felt doubtful how long the impression she had made would endure. Each heart must pass through the furnace for itself. To hear of the refining of others, has no lasting effect on the heart's own alloy.

She knew this, and her thoughts followed Flower anxiously. At length she rose, and stood leaning her elbow upon the mantelpiece and looking long at an old miniature of the doctor, placed there among Flower's special treasures; but the doctor before Flower knew him, the doctor as he was in years gone by, when he and the baby's godmother were faithful chums, and she was his trusted confidante and the sharer of all his hopes and ambitions. So she stood looking into the bright, dark eyes of a very young man, a man with all the best of life before him, full of a noble courage, an unfaltering faith in his ideals, an intellect which should carry him anywhere he willed to go. A smile of conscious power curved the lips. There was no hint of weariness about the keen, clear eyes.

The baby's godmother took it up and laid it in the palm of her large hand. Then she spoke to it softly. "Oh, Boy!" she said, "oh, Boy! I have done my best for you. I would always have given you all I had to give. But you wanted loveliness and I could only give you love. You have the loveliness and now you are sighing for the love. God send you that, my dear--my dear. Oh, Boy! I have done what I could."

She put the portrait down and turned away as the door opened suddenly to admit the doctor's wife, breathless.

"Jane, such a nuisance! Madame Celestine has arrived. I entirely forgot the appointment. My gown for the next Drawing-room, the final fitting--oh, such a dream! Come up and see, and help and advise. You old darling, what a blessing to have you here! I never _can_ be firm with Celestine."

The luncheon gong had sounded punctually as the clock struck one. The baby's godmother had waited, restlessly, ten minutes, and then received a message not to wait, Mrs. Brand would be down from the workroom shortly.

Tailor-made, booted, and hatted, ready for her journey into Norfolk, Jane helped herself to cold chicken and salad, and kept her eye on the clock, remembering "two sharp."

"If she comes down quite ready she can do it," thought the baby's godmother, and turned her healthy attention to apple-tart and custard.

The door opened and the doctor's wife trailed in, in a teagown.

"Dear Jane, I apologize. But I knew my absence would not impair your appetite, and you should not have left me until that good creature had gone. The restraint of your presence removed, she launched out into fresh suggestions, and wheedled me into having a gown for the Devonshire's big squash, though I had meant to go in my Paquin. How beautifully you carve, my dear, or did old Stoddart do it for you? This fowl looks as if it had been handled by a man and an expert. Now, I fear, I am going to make it look as if it had crossed the road in front of a motor-car. What on earth are you gazing at? 'My pretty Jane, my dearest Jane, oh, never look so shy!'" trilled the doctor's wife. "Is anything wrong with the custard?"

"Flower! How are you to be ready at 2 sharp, when here it is 1.45 and you in that flimsy teagown?"

"My dear, I am not going. It is always wisest to adhere to first plans. I should _love_ to go, but I could not possibly be ready now, and I cannot feel it right to leave the children when nurse--"

The door opened quickly and the doctor came in.

"Dearest," cried Flower, "Lunch after all? If only I had known you were coming I would have saved a wing--"

"No," said the doctor, brightly, "no time for lunch to-day, and I hardly ought to have come upstairs. I have one more patient to see, and my hansom is at the door. But I wanted to say good-bye, dear, and also to say--" he dropped his voice slightly--"don't worry about not having been able to come. It was selfish of me to ask it of you, Flower. And then I remembered, too, Jeanette was going home to-day, so I ran up to bid her good-bye, a longer farewell than ours."

He went round the table and held out his hand to the baby's godmother.

"Good-bye, Jeanette. My love to all at home. Look us up again when you can. And thank you for all your loving-kindness to me and mine."

The baby's godmother rose, and her hand went firmly home to his. Their eyes were almost on a level as they stood together.

"Good-bye, Boy," she said. "Don't overwork. Rest whenever possible. And remember, you and yours are always dear to me. Let me do all I can."

A half-puzzled, half-pleased look leaped into his eyes at sound of the old name. It was many years since she had used it. He held her hand and looked at her with steady scrutiny for a moment. She met his gaze full and clear. She had nothing to hide.

"Good-bye, dear," said the doctor, then turned to his wife, and hesitated.

"Good-bye, Flower," he said, rather wistfully.

Flower objected to any demonstration in public. She waved her napkin.

"Good-bye, my lord," she said, "and while you are gallivanting about at Brighton, please remember your poor, little domesticated wife staying at home to tend house and children."

The door closed sharply behind the doctor. The baby's godmother bent over her plate in silence. The doctor's wife laughed, moved round the table to cut a slice of cake, laughed again, rather mirthlessly, then reiterated all the reasons why it was unreasonable of Deryck to have asked her to go to Brighton, and of Jane to have made such a point of her acquiescing, concluding with, "And why do you call him 'Boy'? Such a silly, inappropriate name! And, oh, I wish I had gone! I hear his hansom. What a hateful world!"

* * * * *

Eight o'clock in the evening.

The soft, green curtains were drawn in Flower's boudoir, shutting out the chill of the spring night air. The electric light, shining through water-lilies, gleamed, soft and bright, from walls and writing-table. Flower had turned on every spray, hoping to lighten with exterior brightness the heavy shadow of disappointment and foreboding which had fallen upon her heart.

Since the doctor's hansom had tinkled rapidly away towards Victoria, all had gone wrong with the doctor's wife.

The baby's godmother, who had had so much to say in the morning, became absolutely monosyllabic, and conversation languished and died.

It was a relief to see her depart, with her neat, gentlemanly luggage, for Liverpool Street Station, and yet it seemed desolate without her, and the klip-klop of her rapidly receding hansom made a second sound to be added to the series of knells which should ring in Flower's heart that day.

Turning from the hall-door, she ran up to the nursery, to find out at what hour nurse wished to be free for her outing, and found it was to-morrow for which nurse had asked, not to-day. Nurse was quite sure she had said Wednesday; how could she have said Tuesday, when the married niece to whom she was going always went out to tea on Tuesdays with her mother-in-law in Pimlico? But, of course, Master Deryck _was_ hammering at the time, which may have accounted for his mamma not rightly catching the day. Emma came forward, a ready witness to the fact that nurse had most certainly said Wednesday, and stuck to her guns, in spite of Dicky's quiet little voice asserting gravely from the position he had taken up at his mother's side, "_You_ had gone down for the milk."

So the doctor's wife retreated in discomfiture and trailed slowly downstairs, facing the fact that the one reason which had seemed an insuperable obstacle to her falling in with her husband's wish and plan, had been a mistake; a stupid, careless mistake.

What would Jane say if she knew?

The tersely expressed remark with which Jane would most likely define the situation came into her mind, and she smiled a wan little smile, for the doctor's wife possessed "the saving sense of humor."

Then she felt more cheerful, rang and ordered the motor, and dressed for a spin in the park. But everything spoke of Brighton and the enjoyment she might have had with the doctor on this lovely day.

The sun was almost warm, and there was a pursuing scent of violets in the air. The crocuses were shouting to the sparrows, and the many-colored hyacinths pushed their bright heads up through the brown earth, obedient to the beckoning of the sunshine. The whole park sang of springtime, of life and love and joys to come. And she longed for him beside her, with his keen enjoyment, with his quick way of pointing out a fresh beauty which she might otherwise have overlooked, with his knack of making you feel that you were alive, and living every minute to the full, receiving all it had to give, and, above all, with the ever-kindling adoration of his love wrapping her round and making her feel herself to be good and beautiful and worthy.

This afternoon she sadly needed reinstating in her own esteem. She knew she was being unjust to herself, but she felt selfish and inadequate and unworthy of him and of his love. It was Jane who had given her this uncomfortable feeling. It was odious of Jane to call him "Boy" and to pretend to understand his needs better than she, his own wife, did. Oh, if only she had gone to Brighton! If only she had gone! But it was not _her_ fault that she had been unable to fall in with the plan at so short notice. Deryck himself had admitted that it was he who was to blame, and she was not to worry. It was all very well for men to tell poor, anxious women not to worry. He might have known she would be wondering all the rest of the day how he was faring at Brighton, whether he was too tired to eat and too tired to sleep. If only horrid old celebrities would die at once when they fell ill, instead of causing all this fuss and trouble.... It would be a great pity to be too tired to eat at the Metropole, where the table d'hôte dinner was so perfect.... It was trying of Deryck to rush off with only a packet of sandwiches in his bag, when, by taking five minutes more from his tiresome patients, he might have had the wing of a chicken and some salad.... What a good lunch Jane had made! If she had _really_ been so troubled at the thought of Deryck going off alone she would hardly have hurried into the dining-room the moment the gong sounded and given her mind so completely to her food. Jane was the sort of person who enjoyed putting other people in the wrong. So different to Deryck, who saw at once where the blame really belonged and never laid it upon others. Which was it most right to believe--Deryck or Jane? Deryck, of course. Then why feel condemned any longer?... How lovely it would have been at Brighton! A _selfish_ person would have gone at once and not have been so considerate for tiresome old nurse with her changeable plans. People who change their plans without any adequate reason do not deserve much consideration. If she had been a less devoted mother--How sweet it was of Dicky to point out that Emma had gone down for the milk! So like Deryck, who never would allow her to be unjustly put in the wrong. It was wonderful to be so loved by two such natures, father and son. A woman who was selfish or unworthy could never have drawn out such love. Jane was not in the least likely ever to marry. How disgusting of her to speak so approvingly of married women who ran after Deryck. Perhaps, after all, one of those creatures would happen to be at the Metropole this evening and would insist upon dining with him at a table for two.

Another wan little smile flitted across Flower's face. The dimple the doctor loved peeped out. She knew so exactly how he would feel and look, and how he would describe the whole occurrence to her afterwards, giving her unconsciously the gratifying certainty that in her absence no other woman could by any possibility usurp her place.

The gliding motion of the car made her drowsy. She leaned back with closed eyes, enjoying the sensation of speeding forward, trusting to the deft vigilance of her chauffeur, not even seeing for herself the possible collisions avoided, the rapid half-turn which meant gliding from danger into safety.

The roar of traffic on the distant thoroughfare sounded like the breaking of the waves on the beach at Brighton. She fancied herself driving along the King's Road, alighting at the Metropole and meeting Deryck, to whom she would say, "Dearest, I came after all."

The sudden slowing of the car aroused her. They were held up for a moment in a cross-stream of carriages near the main gate. She opened her eyes and they fell upon a man and woman close by, sitting side by side in a victoria. The woman had a spray of white roses on her muff. Her companion bent towards her with a whispered word. She instantly detached a milk-white bud from the rest and handed it to him. Her look of blissful, submissive love as she did this, reached to the motor as an enlightening beam. The man took the rose and fastened it carefully in his button-hole without any expressed thanks, but, as he leaned back in the carriage beside her, his look of restful and masterful possession of herself and all she possessed seemed fully to content the woman. Her eyes and lips smiled tenderly, and lifting the white roses she laid them for a moment against her cheek.

"Home," said the doctor's wife, suddenly; and as the car turned obediently and sped out at the gate the voice of the baby's godmother seemed to pursue her relentlessly: "_Give Deryck his white rose while he asks it of you. A man requires the instant fulfillment of his heart's desires. When he needs a thing, he needs it_ NOW!"

Ah, Jeanette, you were very faithful, and you did what you could.

* * * * *

Arrived at home, the doctor's wife had tea in company with one or two choice spirits who dropped in to discuss the reception at Myra Ingleby's and the coming big affair at the Devonshire's, and much interest was aroused by the fact that the doctor's wife was _not_ going in her Paquin, but was to have an absolutely new creation by that clever old dear, Celestine.

After all, Jane, with her attention fixed upon apple-tart and her mind so completely, blankly unsympathetic, was enough to depress anybody. Deryck would be the first to be indignant, if he knew what Jane had said.

Her visitors gone, she rang for the children, and the promised game of menagerie began, though their small minds had leaped to something else, which they assured her they would like much better. But she insisted on the menagerie, rapidly pulling all the stuffed animals out of the toy cupboard and hurrying them into the middle of the room. She felt unable to endure that no part of the programme she had explained to Deryck should take place, and for many years to come the children used to speak between themselves of menageries as "mother's favorite game."

All went well for a time. She enjoyed sitting on the soft carpet, with Blossom rolling over her, a creamy billow of cashmere and lace, and small Deryck in his black velvet suit, with his neat little black silk legs and buckled shoes, gravely marshalling the animals and explaining the mental condition of each, their relation to one another, and their past and present experiences.

But by and by he began asking awkward questions about Noah's Ark and would not be put off with evasive answers. The doctor's wife felt helpless. She knew little of animals, less of ships, and nothing whatever of ancient preachers of righteousness. A complete and comprehensive knowledge of all three would have been required to have satisfactorily answered Dicky's questions. So, harassed and worried, she entrenched herself hastily in what appeared to be an impregnable position.

"My dear little boy, how can I possibly tell? _I was not there._"

Deryck, the younger, was arranging that a bear who could only sit--who had been born sitting and stiffened in that position--should ride, in the procession, on the wide back of an elephant.

But he stopped the procession at this, set the bear down, and came and stood opposite his mother, surveying her gravely, with his hands deep in the pockets of his velvet breeches. She sat on the floor beside the sofa, her lovely head thrown back against a cushion, looking up at him with eyes full of love and almost wistful tenderness.

His little face at first was rather hard and stern, but, as he looked at her, it softened. Her ignorance of Noah's domestic arrangements seemed to matter less. She was so-lovely that it seemed unreasonable to expect her to be other things!

"You are not much use at answering questions, darling, are you?" he said gravely. "I must let the point stand over until father comes home. You see, you never seem to know about anything you have not done yourself."

"Dicky, you are not kind to poor mummie," protested Flower, piteously. "No one could _possibly_ know what Noah did to the animals in the Ark when the large ones trod upon the small ones, or how the elephant was kept from stepping on the grasshopper."

"An average person would know," Dicky insisted coldly.

"Dicky, you are most unkind! You imply that I am stupid."

"I am afraid you are, darling," said the quiet little voice, and then, in a sudden burst of admiration, "But you are _much_ too lovely for it to matter." And the miniature edition of the doctor fell upon her and clasped her in his arms.

"We must say our text to you, mother, as father is away," Dicky remarked a few minutes later, when bedtime came.

Flower assented without enthusiasm. She did not approve of nurse's plan of teaching the children a daily text, and always wondered why Deryck encouraged it. But she did not wish again to present herself to her little son's mind in a disappointing light.

Dicky arranged Baby Blossom "in a row" with himself. She immediately began to say, "Do it--do it!" and had to be sternly hushed by her brother. Then, with his hands behind him and his head erect, Dicky announced impressively:

"Jesus said: 'If you shall ask anythink in my name, I will'--now, baby--"

"Do it!" chirped Baby Blossom.

"Very nice," commented Flower, perfunctorily.

Baby Blossom, her duty done, took a header into the soft sofa-cushion, shrieking with delight and waving her plump little legs in the air. Deryck, though deserted, kept his place in the "row." He had not yet finished with the text.

"Do you consider it true, mother?" he questioned, and his dark eyes searched her face.