He was fully occupied with this other sufferer for a long time. He did
all the proper things, threw water over him, slapped his hands, forced
brandy down his throat, until he revived. Then he fetched Mrs. Hansen
and she made him drink hot soup and eat bread and butter. There wasn’t a
sound upstairs. Resolutely Mr. Petersen kept his mind away from Minnie,
and clung to Mrs. Hansen, followed her wherever she went. Her calmness,
her ordinariness solaced, as well as the fact that she was a woman. He
questioned her minutely about Alec and what she thought he needed,
without listening to her replies. It was only her reassuring voice he
needed.
“There now!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Petersen, the doctor’s coming down.”
“She’s dead!” he thought.
But the doctor was smiling.
“A fine boy!” he said.
V
Presently, as dawn was breaking, the nurse came running downstairs to
Mr. Petersen.
“You may go in for just a _minute_!” she said.
She was looking worn and jaded, and, for the first time, not
immaculately neat. She was human now.
Mr. Petersen took it upon himself to invite Alec to come with him.
“It will do you good, my boy,” he said.
So they entered the room together, together had their first glimpse of
the newly-born little man. He was asleep, his red, wizened little face
screwed up into a look of comical misery, his tiny dark-red claws
stretched up. The nurse assured them that he was large and that he was
healthy.
Minnie was lying flat on her back, with a long braid of hair over each
shoulder, framing a very pale and grave face. She was exhausted and ill,
but proudly victorious, aware that she had accomplished a masterly
thing. Thus had she replied to all doubts or questions whatever that
might arise within Mr. Petersen. She was the mother of his son; she had
established a claim upon his heart and upon his conscience which he
could never deny. He not only loved her, he reverenced her. A deep
conviction, belonging to a somewhat old-fashioned brand of Socialism, of
the “sacredness of motherhood,” lay in him. Minnie had heard a great
deal of it from him. It made her more than ever conscious of what a
remarkable and praiseworthy thing she had accomplished. She looked at
the two men with a worn yet sublime smile.