we never sat in the drawing-room, with its Reynolds’ prints, but went
always to the nursery, with its rocking-horse and its Noah’s ark, and
its lead soldiers, and its play-table. But when there--when playing
these silly games of soldiers, which Helen had been wont to play as if
eternal salvation depended on the nice adjustment of a small tin
cannon, which, when you pulled a string, shot a pea--she had a change of
mood most disconcerting at first. Now and again she shot down my
Generalissimo, posted, as he should be, out of possibility of attack
almost, in the very rear of my army, by some inconceivable ricochet
which would a few weeks ago have filled her mouth with laughter. But
now, when these unspeakable flukes occurred, and she upset the heaviest
soldiers in my brigade, instead of being delighted, she was sorry, and
apologized. To injury, which was bad enough, she added insult, which was
worse, and said: ‘I am afraid I must win now.’
* * * * *
There is another curious thing (Helen looks over my shoulder as I write,
and agrees) that, though she still loves to play soldiers, she wants me
to win. Consider it: whoever before wanted to play a game (and the more
childish the game, the less worth while you would have thought to play
it), if he did not care about winning? Besides, it is so exceedingly
unlike her--she is looking over my shoulder no more--not to play any
game as if life and death depended on it. But now she applauds my skill
and my luck, and apologizes for her own.
* * * * *
And then, when the game is over, and the Duke of Wellington on one side
and Julius Cæsar on the other lie dead, she still sits on the ground
beside the low play-table, and looks round the room with wandering,
happy eyes. There are the playthings I have told you of--the Noah’s ark,
the rocking-horse, the great dolls’-house, the front of which, windows
and door and all, is unfastened by a neat latch in the wall of the
second story, and swings open altogether, so that you must be careful
not to unlatch it early in the morning or late at night, else you would
see all the ladies and gentlemen at their toilet in an embarrassing
state of undress. I found Helen the other morning playing at dolls all
by herself. She had laid a banquet in the dining-room, and had arranged
the ladies and gentlemen on the stairs, so that one could see at once
that they were going down to dinner. From their attitudes, and a
tendency to lean against each other or the wall, you might have thought
that they were trying to get upstairs after the banquet. But that, Helen
told me, was foolish, since their faces were all turned in the direction
of downstairs. The answer was that they had indulged even more freely
than I had supposed, and were trying to get upstairs backwards.
Yes; we did all these extremely childish things, and so far from being
ashamed of them, I set them all down here for you to laugh at if you
like, or merely to be bored with. Things like these--playing at soldiers
or at dolls--retained their interest, just as did the spirit of the
blossoming summer, when Mr. Holmes’s discoveries or the fall of the
ceiling in Sloane Street lacked the calibre to interest us. And, if you
come to think of it, though I thought an explanation would be difficult,
nothing in the world could be more simple. Things about children, and
birth, and growth were clearly the only affairs that could concern us.
One morning, I remember, it was found that the foundations of the
cathedral were in a dreadful state, and that it would probably fall
down. I told Helen this as she was engaged on preparing a Gargantuan
breakfast for the birds. She only said:
‘Oh, what a pity!’
That was all she cared for the historic Norman pile, with all kinds of
Kings and Queens buried inside it!
There is nothing more to be recorded of this month, since the only
things that seemed to us to have any real importance were just the
childishnesses of which I have already given you such amplitude of
specimens, until the morning of the last day of May.
* * * * *
The rule of the house was that there was no rule of any sort as regards
breakfast. Anybody who came into the dining-room at most hours of the
morning would find the breakfast perennials (bread, butter, sugar, milk,
the morning paper and marmalade) on the table, and would, on ringing a
bell, be given the annuals--_i.e._, fresh tea and a hot dish. Similarly,
anybody who did not come into the dining-room was supposed to be
breakfasting either elsewhere or not at all. So on this last morning of
May, on coming down, I rang the bell, and read the paper till bacon
came. An hour before I had just looked into Helen’s room, and seen that
she was still asleep.
* * * * *
The bacon was rather long coming that morning--I try to reconstruct the
day exactly as it happened--and I had already skimmed the news, and
found there was not any, and in default of it was reading a superb
account of the visit of a member of the Royal Family to Naples, who in
the afternoon had ‘honoured’ (so said the loyal press) the volcano of
Vesuvius with a visit. How gratifying for the immortal principle of
fire! One hoped it would not become swollen in the head. This fortunate
volcano, whose cone had been blessed----
At the moment I heard a step outside. It was not from the kitchen: it
was coming from upstairs, and it came very quickly. Then,
instantaneously, terror seized me, for time and place were no longer now
and here, but it was the evening when I heard my name called in the
garden, and thereafter heard Legs running downstairs. And quickly as the
steps came, they seemed to me to go on for ever; yet I had only just
time to get up, when there came a fumbling hand on the door, and Helen’s
maid came in.
‘If you please, sir, would you send at once,’ she began. ‘The nurse----
’
There were quicker ways than sending, and next minute I was flying up
the road on my bicycle. My mind, as I think must always happen with any
mind in such moments, seemed curiously inactive, though somewhere there
was inside me a little bit of tissue, so to speak, that agonized, and
hoped, and prayed. But for the most I only thought of one thing--that
once before I had gone on just the same errand, from this same house, up
the same road, to fetch the doctor for her, my dearest friend. O
Margery! I go quickly to God and tell Him.... We want Him.
And then the tissue that agonized and prayed sank out of sight again,
and I was just speeding up the sunny, dusty road, on which, as I got
nearer the town, the traffic became denser. Once a butcher’s cart pulled
suddenly out into the middle of the road in front of me, and I thought
collision was inevitable, except that I knew that it was not possible
that I should be stopped when going on such an errand as this, and
several times I passed people I knew, yet, though I knew them, their
faces were meaningless: they conveyed names, but nothing whatever more.
And then--whether very soon or countless ages later, I had no idea--I
was at the doctor’s door in the quiet, decorous street, which also was
meaningless--neither strange nor familiar, but purely without
significance. Everything I saw was detached; nothing had any relation to
life, except just one thing: his dog-cart, which was at the door,
concerned me.
He had not yet started on his rounds, and it was not five minutes before
he was ready. He had only to pick up a little bag, into which he put a
case of some kind, and something bright, that I turned my eyes from, and
a bottle which he wrapped up--it seemed to me very neatly and
slowly--which clinked against that which was already in the bag.
Then he turned to me.
‘Now, if you take my advice,’ he said, ‘you won’t come back with me, but
will go for a ride on this beautiful morning. You will not see your
wife, and for the next hour or so it is not possible that I should have
anything to tell you. We don’t want you in the house: we don’t want to
be bothered with you.’
He got briskly into his dog-cart, nodded to me over his shoulder, and,
instead of driving himself, gave his servant the reins. I know I shouted
something after him, telling him, I think, to be careful, and so found
myself on the doorstep, looking at a bicycle which was leaning against
the pillar of the porch, and was evidently not mine. But, like the
dog-cart, it was not meaningless, for it was Helen’s, which I must have
used by mistake. I must take it back; it was careless of me.
Then his advice occurred to me, but it sounded ridiculous, as senseless
as some nursery-rhyme. And at the thought there suddenly started in my
head the first two lines of ‘Humpty-Dumpty.’ I could not remember the
last two lines, but the first went round and round in my brain, keeping
time to my pedalling.
Soon after I was home again, only a moment behind him, for he was just
getting out when I came to the gate, and I waited till he had gone in,
so that he should not know I had failed to follow his advice--at least,
I believe that was the reason, but I am not sure.
I went round by the back way into the garden, and sat down in the
veranda outside my own room, where Fifi was lying in the sun. But I had
to coax her silently indoors, for I could not bear that she should lie
there, lest suddenly she should again look out into the garden, and howl
at something she saw there. She would not come in at first, and once she
pricked her ears at something she saw outside, and I stopped mine, lest
I should hear her howl. And all the time ‘Humpty-Dumpty’--the first two
lines of it--went on and on. It was so terribly lonely, too--just that
silly rhyme, and I all alone. If only Legs were here, or
anybody--anybody. You see, this was not expected to-day, nor for weeks
yet. My mother was coming to stay with us next week, until....
Then I heard the muffled sound of steps in the room just above my
head--Helen’s room--and at that for a little the babble and confusion of
my troubled brain cleared, and ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ ceased, and I was not
afraid of Fifi howling, for there was no room for anything except the
thought of Helen, who lay there, and of the life yet unborn. And I could
not help--I could not bear any of it for her. I could not even be with
her: birth was as lonely as death.
Outside the garden lay basking in the heat of the early summer, and
everywhere the expansion of life, which had seemed to us so wonderful
and glorious a thing through all these weeks of May, suddenly became
sinister and menacing. What travail may not go to the opening of a
single flower, or the maturing of its casket of seeds? It would all be
of a piece with the cruelty and the anguish that runs through life like
a scarlet, bleeding thread, beginning, as now, even before birth, and
not even ending with death, since those who remain have the wound of
that yet to be healed. Right through life goes the scarlet thread,
knotted on the farther side at each end, so that it shall not slip.
And--‘Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall.’ Ah, yes! I had it all now. ‘The
King’s horses’ was what I could not remember. And at that the crowd of
trivialities again came between my mind and me.
We had set up the croquet-hoops again only last week, and had argued
over the position of that particular corner one by which my ball had
rested when last autumn a telegram had been brought me from the house.
Helen had said it was square with the corresponding corner; I knew it
was not, and from here it was perfectly easy to see that she had been
wrong. I hate an awry disposition of hoops. ‘All the King’s horses’ ...
they really should bring these rhymes up to date; it ought to be
motor-cars instead of horses.
These things passed very slowly through my mind, for it acted as if it
was numbed and half-paralyzed, and the croquet-hoop occupied the
foreground of it for a considerable time. I had let Fifi out again, and
she was racing about the lawn in the attempt to catch swallows, a feat
of which she never realized the unreasonableness, and I had left the
doors into my room, both from the hall and from here outside, open. And
then, with the same rapidity as they had come, all these nonsense
things passed away again, for I heard steps on the stairs, and, going
in, saw the doctor standing on the landing above, talking in low tones
to the nurse. He saw me, made a little movement of his hand as if to
detain me, and when he had finished what he had to say to her, came
downstairs.
‘I will have a word with you,’ he said gravely; and we went into my
room. I saw him looking at me rather curiously, and was wondering why,
when he suddenly seemed to lean up against me. Then I perceived that it
was I who was swaying on my feet. He put me in a chair.
‘I suppose you have not had breakfast,’ he said. ‘You are to eat
something immediately; I will ring the bell. And now listen. It is going
to be difficult, and, I am afraid, dangerous, and it is better that you
should know it now.’
And then the dear, kind man just laid his hand on my arm.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said; ‘you can’t think how I hate to tell you
this. I hope it will be all right; there is nothing yet that forbids me
to hope that. Please God, we shall pull her through, but--well, well.’
He broke off as the door opened, and a servant came in.
‘Just bring a tray in here,’ he said. ‘Tea? Yes, tea, and an egg and a
couple of bits of toast. Thank you.’
‘Remember, I still hope it will be all right,’ he said. ‘And even
if--well, you are both young still. Now I shall be back here in an hour
at the outside.’
‘You are not going,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t.’
‘Yes, yes. I know what you feel,’ he said. ‘But there is nothing for me
to do here yet, and I have to make arrangements so that I can come back
and remain here till all--is satisfactory.’
‘You don’t stir from this house,’ I said.
‘Do you think I should go if there was the slightest possibility of your
wife needing me?’ he said quietly.
‘No; I beg your pardon.’
‘That’s all right. Now when your breakfast comes, eat it, and read a
book if you can, or go and garden. I am sure those roses of yours want
looking after, and I tell you it’s a hard thing for a man in your
position, and a thing which we doctors respect, to go and occupy
himself. If you can’t, you can’t, but you might have a try.’
The servant brought in a tray before many minutes, and with it the
morning paper. When I had eaten, I took it up and looked at it. There
was no news, but the middle page contained an account of a visit to
Vesuvius by an English Prince. He ‘honoured’ the volcano with a visit.
And then I knew that I had seen the paper before. But when? Years and
years ago, or this morning?
What the doctor had said to me needed no time or thought for realizing
it. I felt as if I had known it all along--known it all my life.
But--what happened next, if that all happened long ago? Was the room
overhead the chamber of death or the chamber of birth? Next door to it
was the nursery, with its Noah’s ark and its soldiers and its
rocking-horse. Who going to ride on that? And the dolls’-house, with its
tottering inhabitants--who next was to play with those, and open the
wall? Oh, Helen, Helen, you and your child, will it be? Or will it be
you and I again, but after a long time, hoping once more? Or--dear God,
no, not that!
* * * * *
Daffodil-day, and its sisters of the spring! And Rose-day will come next
month. Roses ... heaped for the beloved’s bed. Dear God, not that: it
does not mean that bed. Indeed--indeed it does not. You have so many
souls already in Your house of many mansions. Give us a few more years
together, for they are so sweet, and a thousand years in Your sight are
but as yesterday. And we should so like a young thing, one of our own,
in the house. But ... thank You very much for the years that have been
so sweet. They have been--they have been. And, please don’t let her
suffer or be frightened.
Then I went across the lawn and into the rose-garden. Though we had been
very industrious there, I never saw yet the rose-tree on which there is
nothing to be done, and for a little my hands made themselves busy. Then
quite suddenly it all became impossible, and there was nothing in the
world except what the doctor had told me, and floating on the top of
that ‘Humpty-Dumpty, Humpty-Dumpty.’
So it was within the hour that I got back again to the house, and the
doctor had not yet returned. I missed something familiar on the lawn,
without at once knowing what it was, and then I saw that the birds’
breakfast was not there. That took me to the dining-room, where I found
lunch was already laid, and with bread-crumb and little bits of cheese,
and cold meat mixed, I made a plateful for them, though, as you know, it
was the last day of May, and I suppose it was but pauperism among the
thrushes that I encouraged. But Helen all these days had done so. I knew
she would not like them to miss their provision.
Soon after--so soon that the news of their belated meal had not yet
become public among the birds--the doctor returned. I heard him go
upstairs, and after that I crept into the hall, and sat down on the
lowest step of the seventeen that led to the landing. Legs used to jump
down them in two bounds, taking eight steps first, and then nine, and
get up (with a run) in three--two sixes and a five.... What am I
maundering about? And before very long I must have been sitting higher
up the stairs, for I could see out of the window on the staircase. The
dog-cart had drawn away from the door into the shade, and the groom had
got down, and was gently stroking the mare’s nose. Then he laid his
smooth young cheek against it, and she stood quite still, liking it. I
expect he is kind to her.
The sun had swung round farther to the west, and it came in through the
window. But now I was nearly at the top of the stairs; there were but
three above where I sat. The house was very still; below me on the
ground-floor there had been no step or sign of life, and there was
nothing from behind the second door to the left just above me. Then came
the sharp tingle of an electric bell. There was only one room from which
it could have come.
I tapped very gently, though my heart beat so that I thought it must
have been a hammer-noise to those inside. The door opened a chink, and a
level, quiet voice said: ‘Some hot water, please--very hot.’ Perhaps a
minute afterwards I tapped again, and a hand took the can of hot water
from me.
I went back again, this time to the top step, and still waited. Since I
had done something, though it was but the handing of a can of hot water
into the room, that nightmare of incoherent thoughts began to clear more
completely, and, like some remembered sunlight breaking clouds, and
shining with the serene quietude of eventide, Helen--she herself, no
intercepted vision, no vision even of remembrance only or
anxiousness--shone out. Whatever happened, she was I, and I was she, and
the Will of God, whatever It might ordain for us, could not alter that.
She and I, I think, have never feared anything when we were together,
and surely of all days that life or death could hold for us, we could
never be more together than to-day. So, surely, of all hours this is the
one when fear should be farthest from us, for never have we been
together like this. Yet, O my God, my God, since Christ was born of a
woman, let Him go in there, the second door....
And the next door, You know, is the nursery.... No, not the farther one,
but the one this side. Yes, yes, of course You know, but You might have
forgotten. There’s the Noah’s ark there, and the dolls’-house, and the
lead soldiers. We had hoped....
* * * * *
Red light came in through the window on the stairs--light of sunset.
Once more the stinging sound of the electric bell came to me; once more
I took up a can of hot water.
Then it grew dark; in the hall below the lamp had been lit, and from the
window, after the last red of sunset had faded, there came the distant
shining of stars, endlessly remote. Then the door opened again, and the
nurse came hurrying out, forgetting to close it. From within came the
cry of a child.
* * * * *
_June 1._--I overstep the bounds of the year, but you may like to know.
Quite early this morning I was allowed to go in and look. They were
sleeping, both of them--she and he.
Afterwards I went into the nursery.
THE END.
* * * * *
ESTABLISHED 1798
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