The child was born a little before expectation at the cottage throughout
a long summer's night and day in early September. Its coming into the
world was a long and painful struggle; the general practitioner who had
seemed two days before a competent and worthy person enough, revealed
himself as hesitating, old-fashioned, and ill-equipped. He had a
lingering theological objection to the use of chloroform, and the nurse
from London sulked under his directions and came and discussed his
methods scornfully with Trafford. From sundown until daylight Trafford
chafed in the little sitting-room and tried to sleep, and hovered
listening at the foot of the narrow staircase to the room above. He
lived through interminable hours of moaning and suspense....
The dawn and sunrise came with a quality of beautiful horror. For years
afterwards that memory stood out among other memories as something
peculiarly strange and dreadful. Day followed an interminable night and
broke slowly. Things crept out of darkness, awoke as it were out of
mysteries and reclothed themselves in unsubstantial shadows and
faint-hued forms. All through that slow infiltration of the world with
light and then with colour, the universe it seemed was moaning and
endeavouring, and a weak and terrible struggle went on and kept on in
that forbidden room whose windows opened upon the lightening world,
dying to a sobbing silence, rising again to agonizing cries,
fluctuating, a perpetual obstinate failure to achieve a tormenting end.
He went out, and behold the sky was a wonder of pink flushed level
clouds and golden hope, and nearly every star except the morning star
had gone, the supine moon was pale and half-dissolved in blue, and the
grass which had been grey and wet, was green again, and the bushes and
trees were green. He returned and hovered in the passage, washed his
face, listened outside the door for age-long moments, and then went out
again to listen under the window....
He went to his room and shaved, sat for a long time thinking, and then
suddenly knelt by his bed and prayed. He had never prayed before in all
his life....
He returned to the garden, and there neglected and wet with dew was the
camp chair Marjorie had sat on the evening before, the shawl she had
been wearing, the novel she had been reading. He brought these things in
as if they were precious treasures....
Light was pouring into the world again now. He noticed with an extreme
particularity the detailed dewy delicacy of grass and twig, the silver
edges to the leaves of briar and nettle, the soft clearness of the moss
on bank and wall. He noted the woods with the first warmth of autumn
tinting their green, the clear, calm sky, with just a wisp or so of
purple cloud waning to a luminous pink on the brightening east, the
exquisite freshness of the air. And still through the open window,
incessant, unbearable, came this sound of Marjorie moaning, now dying
away, now reviving, now weakening again....
Was she dying? Were they murdering her? It was incredible this torture
could go on. Somehow it must end. Chiefly he wanted to go in and kill
the doctor. But it would do no good to kill the doctor!
At last the nurse came out, looking a little scared, to ask him to cycle
three miles away and borrow some special sort of needle that the fool of
a doctor had forgotten. He went, outwardly meek, and returning was met
by the little interested servant, very alert and excited and rather
superior--for here was something no man can do--with the news that he
had a beautiful little daughter, and that all was well with Marjorie.
He said "Thank God, thank God!" several times, and then went out into
the kitchen and began to eat some flabby toast and drink some lukewarm
tea he found there. He was horribly fatigued. "Is she all right?" he
asked over his shoulder, hearing the doctor's footsteps on the
stairs....
They were very pontifical and official with him.
Presently they brought out a strange, wizened little animal, wailing
very stoutly, with a face like a very, very old woman, and reddish skin
and hair--it had quite a lot of wet blackish hair of an incredible
delicacy of texture. It kicked with a stumpy monkey's legs and inturned
feet. He held it: his heart went out to it. He pitied it beyond measure,
it was so weak and ugly. He was astonished and distressed by the fact of
its extreme endearing ugliness. He had expected something strikingly
pretty. It clenched a fist, and he perceived it had all its complement
of fingers and ridiculous, pretentious little finger nails. Inside that
fist it squeezed his heart.... He did not want to give it back to them.
He wanted to protect it. He felt they could not understand it or
forgive, as he could forgive, its unjustifiable feebleness....
Later, for just a little while, he was permitted to see
Marjorie--Marjorie so spent, so unspeakably weary, and yet so
reassuringly vital and living, so full of gentle pride and gentler
courage amidst the litter of surgical precaution, that the tears came
streaming down his face and he sobbed shamelessly as he kissed her.
"Little daughter," she whispered and smiled--just as she had always
smiled--that sweet, dear smile of hers!--and closed her eyes and said
no more....
Afterwards as he walked up and down the garden he remembered their
former dispute and thought how characteristic of Marjorie it was to have
a daughter in spite of all his wishes.