For weeks and weeks this astonishing and unprecedented being filled the
Traffords' earth and sky. Very speedily its minute quaintness passed,
and it became a vigorous delightful baby that was, as the nurse
explained repeatedly and very explicitly, not only quite exceptional and
distinguished, but exactly everything that a baby should be. Its weight
became of supreme importance; there was a splendid week when it put on
nine ounces, and an indifferent one when it added only one. And then
came a terrible crisis. It was ill; some sort of infection had reached
it, an infantile cholera. Its temperature mounted to a hundred and three
and a half. It became a flushed misery, wailing with a pathetic feeble
voice. Then it ceased to wail. Marjorie became white-lipped and
heavy-eyed from want of sleep, and it seemed to Trafford that perhaps
his child might die. It seemed to him that the spirit of the universe
must be a monstrous calivan since children had to die. He went for a
long walk through the October beechwoods, under a windy sky, and in a
drift of falling leaves, wondering with a renewed freshness at the
haunting futilities of life.... Life was not futile--anything but that,
but futility seemed to be stalking it, waiting for it.... When he
returned the child was already better, and in a few days it was well
again--but very light and thin.
When they were sure of its safety, Marjorie and he confessed the
extremity of their fears to one another. They had not dared to speak
before, and even now they spoke in undertones of the shadow that had
hovered and passed over the dearest thing in their lives.