When her boy was three years old, Mary had another baby, a girl. The
three years had gone by monotonously. They might have been an eternity,
they might have been brief as a sleep. She did not know. Only, there
was always a weight on top of her, something that pressed down her
life. The only thing that had happened was that Mr Massy had had an
operation. He was always exceedingly fragile. His wife had soon learned
to attend to him mechanically, as part of her duty.
But this third year, after the baby girl had been born, Mary felt
oppressed and depressed. Christmas drew near: the gloomy, unleavened
Christmas of the rectory, where all the days were of the same dark
fabric. And Mary was afraid. It was as if the darkness were coming upon
her.
“Edward, I should like to go home for Christmas,” she said, and a
certain terror filled her as she spoke.
“But you can’t leave baby,” said her husband, blinking.
“We can all go.”
He thought, and stared in his collective fashion.
“Why do you wish to go?” he asked.
“Because I need a change. A change would do me good, and it would be
good for the milk.”
He heard the will in his wife’s voice, and was at a loss. Her language
was unintelligible to him. And while she was breeding, either about to
have a child, or nursing, he regarded her as a special sort of being.
“Wouldn’t it hurt baby to take her by the train?” he said.
“No,” replied the mother, “why should it?”
They went. When they were in the train, it began to snow. From the
window of his first-class carriage the little clergyman watched the big
flakes sweep by, like a blind drawn across the country. He was obsessed
by thought of the baby, and afraid of the draughts of the carriage.
“Sit right in the corner,” he said to his wife, “and hold baby close
back.”
She moved at his bidding, and stared out of the window. His eternal
presence was like an iron weight on her brain. But she was going
partially to escape for a few days.
“Sit on the other side, Jack,” said the father. “It is less draughty.
Come to this window.”
He watched the boy in anxiety. But his children were the only beings in
the world who took not the slightest notice of him.
“Look, mother, look!” cried the boy. “They fly right in my face”—he
meant the snowflakes.
“Come into this corner,” repeated his father, out of another world.
“He’s jumped on this one’s back, mother, an’ they’re riding to the
bottom!” cried the boy, jumping with glee.
“Tell him to come on this side,” the little man bade his wife.
“Jack, kneel on this cushion,” said the mother, putting her white hand
on the place.
The boy slid over in silence to the place she indicated, waited still
for a moment, then almost deliberately, stridently cried:
“Look at all those in the corner, mother, making a heap,” and he
pointed to the cluster of snowflakes with finger pressed dramatically
on the pane, and he turned to his mother a bit ostentatiously.
“All in a heap!” she said.
He had seen her face, and had her response, and he was somewhat
assured. Vaguely uneasy, he was reassured if he could win her
attention.
They arrived at the vicarage at half-past two, not having had lunch.
“How are you, Edward?” said Mr Lindley, trying on his side to be
fatherly. But he was always in a false position with his son-in-law,
frustrated before him, therefore, as much as possible, he shut his eyes
and ears to him. The vicar was looking thin and pale and ill-nourished.
He had gone quite grey. He was, however, still haughty; but, since the
growing-up of his children, it was a brittle haughtiness, that might
break at any moment and leave the vicar only an impoverished, pitiable
figure. Mrs Lindley took all the notice of her daughter, and of the
children. She ignored her son-in-law. Miss Louisa was clucking and
laughing and rejoicing over the baby. Mr Massy stood aside, a bent,
persistent little figure.
“Oh a pretty!—a little pretty! oh a cold little pretty come in a
railway-train!” Miss Louisa was cooing to the infant, crouching on the
hearthrug opening the white woollen wraps and exposing the child to the
fireglow.
“Mary,” said the little clergyman, “I think it would be better to give
baby a warm bath; she may take a cold.”
“I think it is not necessary,” said the mother, coming and closing her
hand judiciously over the rosy feet and hands of the mite. “She is not
chilly.”
“Not a bit,” cried Miss Louisa. “She’s not caught cold.”
“I’ll go and bring her flannels,” said Mr Massy, with one idea.
“I can bath her in the kitchen then,” said Mary, in an altered, cold
tone.
“You can’t, the girl is scrubbing there,” said Miss Louisa. “Besides,
she doesn’t want a bath at this time of day.”
“She’d better have one,” said Mary, quietly, out of submission. Miss
Louisa’s gorge rose, and she was silent. When the little man padded
down with the flannels on his arm, Mrs Lindley asked:
“Hadn’t _you_ better take a hot bath, Edward?”
But the sarcasm was lost on the little clergyman. He was absorbed in
the preparations round the baby.
The room was dull and threadbare, and the snow outside seemed
fairy-like by comparison, so white on the lawn and tufted on the
bushes. Indoors the heavy pictures hung obscurely on the walls,
everything was dingy with gloom.
Except in the fireglow, where they had laid the bath on the hearth. Mrs
Massy, her black hair always smoothly coiled and queenly, kneeled by
the bath, wearing a rubber apron, and holding the kicking child. Her
husband stood holding the towels and the flannels to warm. Louisa, too
cross to share in the joy of the baby’s bath, was laying the table. The
boy was hanging on the door-knob, wrestling with it to get out. His
father looked round.
“Come away from the door, Jack,” he said, ineffectually. Jack tugged
harder at the knob as if he did not hear. Mr Massy blinked at him.
“He must come away from the door, Mary,” he said. “There will be a
draught if it is opened.”
“Jack, come away from the door, dear,” said the mother, dexterously
turning the shiny wet baby on to her towelled knee, then glancing
round: “Go and tell Auntie Louisa about the train.”
Louisa, also afraid to open the door, was watching the scene on the
hearth. Mr Massy stood holding the baby’s flannel, as if assisting at
some ceremonial. If everybody had not been subduedly angry, it would
have been ridiculous.
“I want to see out of the window,” Jack said. His father turned
hastily.
“Do _you_ mind lifting him on to a chair, Louisa,” said Mary hastily.
The father was too delicate.
When the baby was flannelled, Mr Massy went upstairs and returned with
four pillows, which he set in the fender to warm. Then he stood
watching the mother feed her child, obsessed by the idea of his infant.
Louisa went on with her preparations for the meal. She could not have
told why she was so sullenly angry. Mrs Lindley, as usual, lay silently
watching.
Mary carried her child upstairs, followed by her husband with the
pillows. After a while he came down again.
“What is Mary doing? Why doesn’t she come down to eat?” asked Mrs
Lindley.
“She is staying with baby. The room is rather cold. I will ask the girl
to put in a fire.” He was going absorbedly to the door.
“But Mary has had nothing to eat. It is _she_ who will catch cold,”
said the mother, exasperated.
Mr Massy seemed as if he did not hear. Yet he looked at his
mother-in-law, and answered:
“I will take her something.”
He went out. Mrs Lindley shifted on her couch with anger. Miss Louisa
glowered. But no one said anything, because of the money that came to
the vicarage from Mr Massy.
Louisa went upstairs. Her sister was sitting by the bed, reading a
scrap of paper.
“Won’t you come down and eat?” the younger asked.
“In a moment or two,” Mary replied, in a quiet, reserved voice, that
forbade anyone to approach her.
It was this that made Miss Louisa most furious. She went downstairs,
and announced to her mother:
“I am going out. I may not be home to tea.”