For several weeks after Roger's outburst, Anne sensed a new element
in her life, as if she had come face to face with something hidden
before. This element was a quality in Roger that changed the angle of
their relations. She felt that she might be suddenly called upon for
calm judgment, a need might arise for a balancing force between them.
The foundations of her new life, of the deep peace and security she
had felt for the last six months, were not quite so secure as she had
thought them. There was something in Roger she was not quite sure of.
Often during the day, Anne stopped her housework, and made
conversational beginnings calculated to lead to an opening of this
subject with him. But when she concentrated her uneasiness in words,
it seemed always to gain more substance than it really had. Roger did
not approve of Hilary Wainwright. He never had, exactly. But Hilary
Wainwright was not crooked as John Lowell had been. At worst, his
methods might be mistaken. He was trying to do something worth while,
even if he went more slowly and cautiously than Roger's enthusiasm
demanded.
Again and again, Anne concluded that she was exaggerating the tension
between Roger and Wainwright, only to have her fear reach out of the
most unexpected situations and touch her with a small, cold finger.
"I will not start managing him. It gets nowhere and does no good."
Anne's logic always led her to this point, where, by an extra effort,
she usually succeeded in leaving it for the time.
And then, two weeks before Christmas, something happened that drove all
other thoughts from Anne's mind. She was going to have a child. She
knew it now beyond a doubt. The vague fears and tenuous analyses of the
last weeks vanished.
"It's what mamma would call 'my condition,' I suppose."
The world had changed, suddenly, and Anne's relation to it and to
herself had changed. Everything seemed bigger, wider and full of soft
mystery. The universe, a great, shadowy stretch far beyond her or
her immediate concerns, now centered in herself. She was the center
of something beyond ordinary life, beyond any small, blind struggle
of mistaken millions, almost beyond the law that governed the daily
comings and goings of mere humanity. No mystic ever felt nearer to
bodies unseen, heard far voices more clearly, than did Anne in the
first days of her sureness; when, her secret guarded for the perfect
moment of revelation, she sat hour after hour, looking out across
the tangled garden to the Bay, to old Tamalpais, quiet, eternal,
understanding.
The Wednesday before Christmas the weather turned. The long period of
sunshine was blotted by the first rain. All day it fell, soaking the
garden and shutting Anne from the world behind a thick, soft curtain.
Roger came early that night, less troubled than he had seemed of late,
and after dinner sat reading before the fire, instead of staring into
it as he had done so often since the Sabatini case. She felt small and
happy and understanding, shut within the warm peace of her home by the
pouring rain, very near to the man sitting so close beside her. She
would tell him now. When he closed his book she slipped her hand into
his and then, leaving her chair, curled up in his lap.
Roger's arms held her gently, and he leaned his cheek against her hair.
Anne waited, a little disappointed that he did not sense instantly the
secret just behind her lips. Surely if Roger had had anything so vital
to tell her, she would have known it. But he only stroked her hair
and now that she was listening with every nerve in her for a key to
Roger's mood, she felt that he was really far away. He was thinking of
something that had nothing whatever to do with her, while she felt so
strangely, almost terribly, one with him. She sat up.
"What is it, Princess?" Roger drew his attention from some distant
point. "Aren't you comfy?"
"How do you know it was anything? You were miles away."
"I guess I was. Not so far, however, not farther than the office."
Anne frowned. "Has Hilary Wainwright come to live permanently in the
house with us? It was really much nicer when we were alone."
Something in Anne's tone made Roger look at her intently. He had come
as near having a quarrel with Hilary Wainwright that afternoon as he
could come, and still keep the secretaryship. He had intended to laugh
off his seriousness and to say nothing until he was surer of himself,
but, at the look in Anne's eyes, he changed his mind:
"Anne, the man's false. I don't believe he really believes a thing he
says. It's a pose, as much of a pose as those silly soft shirts he
wears and those ready-made clothes. He thinks it brings him nearer to
'The People.' He----"
But Anne did not hear beyond the first sentence. Roger stood before
her, defying John Lowell, giving up the law. She rose slowly from his
knees and said quietly:
"Let's not talk about that to-night. Roger,--we're going to have a
baby."
It seemed to Anne an hour that they stood staring at each other while
she saw understanding dawn slowly in Roger's eyes. Understanding, and
then such a blank look of helplessness, that Anne felt the fears of the
last weeks form visibly before her and swarm down, almost suffocating
her.
"Good Lord!" he whispered.
Tears ran down Anne's cheeks.
Roger brushed his hand across his eyes and reached to her, but Anne
stepped back.
"You--don't--want--it," she whispered fiercely, "but I do. I don't
care how many people there are already. I want my baby. I----" She was
almost hysterical now.
Roger took her firmly in his arms.
"Of course I want it, too, Anne. There, dear, there."
Just as if she were a child, crying for a toy, instead of a woman
telling the father of her child the most wonderful news in the world!
Anne lay close, afraid to move away, to make concrete to herself her
own hurt and anger and separateness from Roger. He had not wanted
it. His first reaction had not been joy, but fear. Fear of what?
Over-burdening the world with one small baby more? Or fear for himself,
the new weight of responsibility?
"Please, dear, won't you believe me? I am glad. But it came so
suddenly. Why----"
It was Roger now who was suddenly afraid to voice his question. Why had
Anne chosen that moment to tell him? Had she thrown the thing at him,
a grapple to hold him fast in safe acceptance of Hilary Wainwright's
insincerity? Roger pushed the thought aside.
"This is not the usual way of whispering the 'sweet secret,' is it,
dear?" He turned Anne's face up and smiled into her eyes, wet and hurt.
"Whisper it now, Princess," and he bent his head.
But Anne could not smile. It would take all her strength and courage
to forget--and forgive--that first blank, helpless bewilderment in
Roger's eyes. He might be glad--he had said he was, but he was glad
for her gladness. He had none for the baby itself. He was cheating the
baby of its full meed of welcome, accepting gracefully now for his own
peace and comfort, something he could not escape. And she had hoarded
her secret. She had even thought of saving it to Christmas day! Of
giving Roger this, the biggest present in her power, early in the dawn
when they always waked. She had seen it so clearly, herself creeping
close to Roger. Then the rain had come, walling them in together, and
Roger had seemed nearer than he had for weeks and the depth of her own
happiness had forced the secret from her. And Roger had said:
"Good Lord!"
Anne moved away to physical freedom. In this spiritual isolation she
did not want Roger's arms about her, nor to have him touch her in any
way. Roger straightened at Anne's movement and they stood, one on each
side of the fireplace, outwardly two people very near in the intimacy
of the low fire and shadowed lights, inwardly far apart.
Why had Anne told him, at just this moment? Why had she done it? Had
she felt him slipping over the edge of Hilary Wainwright's insincerity,
out from these months of his own uncertainty, into spiritual freedom,
and thrown the silken lariat of her dependence over him, drawn him back
to the safety of 'a job'?
Without turning, Roger felt Anne standing small, almost prim, by the
fireplace, distrusting him, clinging fast to her safety, as James
Mitchell clung to his little job. Afraid to dare, clutching comfort at
any price. Perhaps she had deliberately decided this thing should be.
She so often understood his unuttered thoughts, clarified his reactions
before they had emerged clearly to himself from their first chaos of
emotion and enthusiasm. If Anne had done this, feeling the safety of
their present comfort slipping! But, when he turned to her--she was
so silvery fair, shame of his own thought rushed over him. Against the
reluctance he felt in her, he drew her to him again. And Anne, in her
desperate need to believe, came back. He kissed her and smiled into
her eyes, and this time, Anne smiled too. But she was glad that Roger
did not insist again that she whisper "the sweet secret!" She did not
want to talk of it until this mood was dead in the past. After a long
silence, she looked up.
"Mamma phoned to-day. She wants us to go there for Christmas."
Their first Christmas to be spent with the Mitchells!
"It's going to be the first real Christmas party mamma has ever had,"
Anne went on, "and she's as excited as a child. Dr. Stetson is back
from the East, more successful and famous than ever and he's asked
Belle to go out twice in three weeks. He's coming, and I believe moms
has some kind of idea that when he sees how successful matrimony can
be, he will be moved to go and do likewise."
Roger tried to smile, but none of Mrs. Mitchell's ideas ever amused
him. This was so exactly the kind of crude thing she would do. But he
had hurt Anne too much to-night to do anything but pretend genuine
pleasure.
"We'll do our best to help the good cause along. Shall I hold your hand
and murmur sweet nothings? Come on, let's practice."
"Don't be silly. But I do wish Belle would marry him." Anne spoke in
such a matronly tone that Roger laughed. "You needn't laugh. Belle's
awfully independent and all that, but she'd make a corking wife for
some man. And this Dr. Stetson does seem more persistent than most.
She usually frightens them off. I shouldn't wonder a bit if something
doesn't come of it." Anne looked oddly like Hilda for a moment.
"Well, you can coach me up, or we'll arrange a code to entangle the
gentleman in domestic felicity. I'll do whatever you tell me."
"Then it's sure to be a success. But, Roger, I do want this to be a
nice dinner. It's really the first effort mamma has ever been able
to make at a jolly Christmas. And she would so have loved trees and
Santa Clauses and all the regulation fixings. Only they cost so much,
and it never seemed worth while, because it would have taken all the
money--even if she could have scraped it together--just for the
machinery and there would have been no party."
Roger's own childhood had not been very full of treats, but at the
picture of little Anne deprived of the usual Christmas, Roger's heart
melted.
"You sweet baby, you. Ours will have a tree the very first year."