UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN
Ronnie laid down his bow, and put his right arm round his wife.
He still held the precious Infant of Prague between his knees, his left
hand on the ebony finger-board.
"My darling!" Helen said. "So we shall be at home for Christmas after
all. How glad I am!"
He looked at her dumbly, and waited.
He felt like the prodigal, who had planned to suggest as his only
possible desert, a place among the hired servants, but was so lifted
into realisation of sonship by the father's welcome, that perforce he
left that sentence unspoken.
So Ronnie looked at her dumbly, reading the utter love for him in her
eyes.
Back came the words of his hymn, replete with fresh meaning.
"O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant!"
They were such faithful eyes--Helen's; and now they seemed filled with
triumphant joy.
"Ronnie," she said, "do you remember how I wrote to you at Leipzig, that
this Christmas we would have a Christmas-tree? Did not you wonder,
darling, why I said that?"
"Yes," answered Ronnie. "I thought of it this evening when I saw a
Christmas-tree at the lodge. I had meant to ask you the night I reached
home, but I did not remember then."
"Ah, if you had," she said, "if you only had!"
"Well?" he questioned. "Tell me now."
"Ronnie, do you remember that in that letter I said I had something to
tell you, and that I enclosed a note, written some weeks before,
telling you this thing?"
"Yes, dear," said Ronnie. "But you forgot to enclose the note. It was
not there. I tore the envelope right open; I hunted high and low. Then
we concluded you had after all considered it unimportant."
"It was all-important, Ronnie; and it _was_ there."
"It was--_where_?" asked Ronnie.
"Under Aubrey's foot.... Oh, hush, darling, hush! We must not say hard
things of a man who has confessed, and who is bitterly repentant. I
can't tell you the whole story now; you shall hear every detail later;
but he saw it fall from the letter, as you opened it. He was tempted,
first, to cover it with his foot; then, to put it in his pocket; and,
after he had read it, he wrote to me implying that you had told him the
news it contained; so, when you arrived home, how could I possibly
imagine that you did not know it?"
"Did not know _what?_" asked Ronnie.
She drew a folded paper from her pocket.
"My darling, this will tell you best. It is the note intended to reach
you at Leipzig; it is the note which, until this afternoon, I had all
along believed you to have received."
She put her note into his hand.
"I hope you will be able to read it by this light, Ronnie. I was very
weak when I wrote it. I could only use pencil."
Ronnie unfolded it gravely.
She knelt, with bowed head, beside him. She dared not watch his face.
She heard his breath come short and fast. He moved his knees, and let go
his 'cello.
The Infant of Prague slipped unnoticed to the floor.
When he read of the birth of his little son, with a hard choking sob,
Ronnie turned and gathered her to him, holding her close, yet eagerly
reading the letter over her head; reading it, to its very last word.
Then, dropping the letter, he clasped her to him, with a strength and a
depth of tenderness such as she had never before known in Ronnie. And
his first words were not what Helen had expected.
"Helen," he said, with another desperate tearless sob, "oh, to think
that you had to go through _that_--alone!"
"My darling boy," she answered, "don't worry about that! It is all over,
now; and it is so true--oh, _so_ true, Ronnie--that the anguish is no
more remembered in the greatness of the joy."
"But I can't forget," said Ronnie--"I shall never forget--that my wife
bore the suffering, the danger, the weakness, and I was not there to
share it. I did not even know what she was going through."
"Ronnie dear--think of your little son."
"I can think of nothing of mine just yet," he answered, "excepting of my
wife."
She gave in to his mood, and waited; letting him hold her close in
perfect silence.
It was strangely sweet to Helen, because it was so completely
unexpected. She had been prepared for a moment of intense surprise,
followed by a rapture of pride and delight; then a wild rush to the
nursery to see his first-born. She was quite willing, now her part was
over, that her part should be forgotten. It was as unexpected as it was
comfortingly precious, that Ronnie should be thus stricken by the
thought of her pain, and of her need of him to help her bear it.
At last he said: "Helen, I see it all now. It was the Upas tree indeed:
utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish!"
"My darling, no!" she cried. "Oh, don't be so unjust to yourself! When I
used those terrible words, I thought you had had my letter, had come
home knowing it all, yet absorbed completely in other things. Misled by
Aubrey, I cruelly misjudged you, Ronnie. It was not selfish to go; it
was not selfish to be away. You did not know, or you would not have
gone. I was glad you should not know, glad you should be away, so that I
could bear it alone, without hindering your work; letting you find the
joy when you reached home, without having had any of the hardness or
the worry. I wished it to be so, my darling boy--and I was glad."
Then Ronnie gently put his wife out of his arms, and took her sweet face
between his hands, looking long into her eyes, before he made reply. And
Helen, steadfastly returning his gaze, saw a look growing in her
husband's face, such as she had never yet seen there, and knew, even
before he began to speak, what he was going to say; and her protective
love, longing as ever to shield him from pain, cried out: "Oh, must I
let him realise that?"
But, at last, through the guidance of wiser Hands than hers, the matter
had passed beyond Helen's control.
"My wife," said Ronnie slowly, "when I called it 'the Upas tree indeed,'
I did not mean the _one_ act of going off in ignorance and leaving you
alone during the whole of that time, when any man who cared at all would
wish to be at hand, to bear, and share, and guard. I do not brand that
as selfish; because you purposely withheld from me the truth, and bid
me go. But _why_ did you withhold it? Why, after the first shock, did
you feel glad to face the prospect of bearing it alone; glad I should be
away? Ah, here we find the very roots of the Upas tree! Was it not
because, during the whole of our married life, I have been cheerfully,
complacently selfish? I have calmly accepted as the rule of the home,
that I should hear of no worries which you could keep from me, tread
upon no thorns which you could clear out of my path, bear no burdens
which your loving hands could lift and carry out of sight. Your
interests, your pleasures, your friends, your pursuits, all have been
swept on one side, if they seemed in the smallest degree likely to
interfere with my work, my desires, my career. You have lived for
me--absolutely. I have lived for myself. True, we have loved each other
tenderly; we have been immensely happy. But, all the while, the shadow
of the Upas tree was there. My very love was selfish! It was sheer joy
to love you, because you are so sweetly, so altogether, lovable. But
when did I--because of my love for you--do one single thing at any cost
to self? I was utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish! You knew
this. You knew I hated pain, or worry, or anything which put my
comfortable life out of gear. So you gladly let me go, leaving you to
bear it all alone. You knew that, had you told me, I should have given
up my book and stayed with you; because my self-love would have been
more wounded by going than by staying. But you also knew that during all
those months you would have had to listen while I bemoaned the
circumstances, and bewailed my plot. You knew the bloom would be taken
off the coming joy, so you preferred to let me go. Oh, Helen, is not
this true?"
She bent her head and kissed his hand. She was weeping silently. She
could not say it was not true.
"It was the Upas tree indeed," said Ronnie.
"Darling," she whispered, "it was my fault too--"
"Hush," he said. "There are faults too noble to be accounted faults.
But--if you think you were at all to blame--you must atone, by truly and
faithfully helping in my fight to root up the Upas tree."
"Ronnie," she said, "a pair of baby hands will help us both. We must
learn to live life at its highest, for the sake of our little son."
Then, knowing he had endured as much heart-searching as a man could bear
and be the better for it, she said, smiling:
"Ronnie, his funny little hands are so absurdly like yours."
"Like _mine_?" repeated Ronnie, as one awaking slowly from a sad dream,
to a blissful reality. "Why are they like mine?"
"Because he is a tiny miniature of you, you dear, silly old boy! You do
not seem to understand that you are actually a father, Ronnie, with a
little son of your own!"
She looked up into his worn face, and saw the young glad joy of life
creep slowly back into it.
"And his mouth, darling--his little mouth is just like yours; only, as
I told you in the letter, when I kiss it--it does not kiss back,
Ronnie."
"What?" cried Ronnie. "What?" Then he understood; and, this time, it was
no mirage. Ronnie's desert wanderings were over.
* * * * *
"But don't you want to see your son?" Helen asked, presently.
Ronnie leapt up.
"See him? Why, of course I do! Oh, come on!... Helen! What does one say
to a very young baby?"
Helen followed him upstairs, laughing.
"That entirely depends upon circumstances. One usually says: 'Did it?'
'Is it then?' or 'Was it?' But I almost think present conditions require
a more definite statement of fact. I fancy one would say: 'How do you
do, baby? _I_ am your papa!' ... This way, Ronnie, in my own old
nurseries. Oh, darling, I am afraid I am going to cry! But you must not
mind. They will only be tears of unutterable joy. Think what it will be
to me, to see my baby in his father's arms!"