A year passed. It was winter again, and the Gattys had had sickness in
their house. Aggie had been ailing ever since the birth of the baby that
had succeeded Emmy. And one evening the doctor had to be summoned for
little Willie, who had croup. Willie, not four years old, was the last
baby but three. Yes, he was only a baby himself; Aggie realized it with
anguish, as she undressed him and he lay convulsed on her lap. He was only
a baby; and she had left him to run about with Arty and Catty as if he
were a big boy. She should have taken more care of Willie.
But the gods took care of Willie, and he was better before the doctor
could arrive; and Aggie got all the credit of his cure.
Aggie couldn't believe it. She was convinced the doctor was keeping
something from her, he sat so long with Arthur in the dining-room. She
could hear their voices booming up the chimney as she mended the fire in
the nursery overhead. It was not, she argued, as if he ever cared to talk
to Arthur. Nobody ever cared to talk to Arthur long, nor did he care to
talk to anybody.
So, when the clock struck seven (the doctor's dinner-hour), and the
dining-room door never opened, Aggie's anxiety became terror, and she
stole down-stairs. She had meant to go boldly in, and not stand there
listening; but she caught one emphatic word that arrested her, and held
her there, intent, afraid of her own terror.
"Never!"
She could hear Arthur's weak voice sharpened to a falsetto, as if he, too,
were terrified.
"No, never. Never any more!"
There was a note almost of judgment in the doctor's voice; but Aggie could
not hear that, for the wild cry that went up in her heart. "Oh, never
what? Is Willie--my Willie--never to be well any more!"
Then she listened without a scruple, justified by her motherhood. They
were keeping things from her, as they had kept them before. As they had
kept them when little Barbara sickened.
[Illustration: "She listened without a scruple, justified by her
motherhood"]
"And if--if--" Arthur's voice was weaker this time; it had a sort of moral
powerlessness in it; but Aggie's straining ears caught the "if."
"There mustn't be any 'ifs.'"
Aggie's heart struggled in the clutches of her fright.
"That's not what I mean. I mean--is there any danger now?"
"From what I can gather so far, I should say--none."
Aggie's heart gave a great bound of recovery.
"But if," the doctor went on, "as you say--"
"I know" cried Arthur, "you needn't say it. You won't answer for the
consequences?"
"I won't. For the consequences, a woman--in the weak state your wife is
in--may answer herself--with her life."
Aggie was immensely relieved. So they were only talking about her all the
time!
That night her husband told her that her release had come. It had been
ordained that she was to rest for two years. And she was to have help.
They must have a girl.
"Arthur," she said, firmly, "I won't have a girl. They're worse than
charwomen. They eat more; and we can't afford it."
"We _must_ afford it. And oh, another thing--Have you ever thought of the
children's education?"
Thought of it? She had thought of nothing else, lying awake at night,
waiting for the baby's cry; sitting in the daytime, stitching at the small
garments that were always just too small.
"Of course," she said, submissively. She was willing to yield the glory of
the idea to him.
"Well," he said, "I don't know how we're going to manage it. One thing I
do know--there mustn't be any more of them. I can't afford it."
He had said that before so often that Aggie had felt inclined to tell him
that she couldn't afford it, either. But to-night she was silent, for he
didn't know she knew. And as she saw that he (who did know) was trying to
spare her, she blessed him in her heart.
If he did not tell her everything that the doctor had said, he told her
that Willie was all right. Willie had been declared to be a child of
powerful health. They weren't to coddle him. As if any one _had_ coddled
him! Poor Aggie only wished she had the time.
But now that her release had come, she would have time, and strength, too,
for many things that she had had to leave undone. She would get nearer to
her children, and to her husband, too. Even at four o'clock in the
morning, Aggie had joy in spite of her mortal weariness, as she rocked the
sleepless baby on the sad breast that had never suckled him. She told the
baby all about it, because she couldn't keep it in.
"My beauty," she murmured, "he will always be my baby. He sha'n't have any
little brothers or sisters, never any more. There--there--there, did
they--? Hsh-sh-sh, my sweet pet, my lamb. My little king--he shall never
be dethroned. Hush, hush, my treasure, or he'll wake his poor Daddy, he
will."
In another room, on his sleepless pillow, the baby's father turned and
groaned.
All the next day, and the next, Aggie went about with a light step, and
with eyes that brightened like a bride's, because of the spring of new
love in her heart.
It came over her now how right Arthur had been, how she ought to have kept
it up, and how fearfully she had let it go.
Not only the lectures--what did they matter?--but her reading, her music,
everything, all the little arts and refinements by which she had once
captured Arthur's heart--"Things," she said, "that made all the difference
to Arthur." How forbearing and constant he had been!
That evening she dressed her hair and put flowers on the supper-table.
Arthur opened his eyes at the unusual appearance, but said nothing. She
could see that he was cross about something--something that had occurred
in the office, probably. She had never grudged him his outbursts of
irritability. It was his only dissipation. Aggie had always congratulated
herself on being married to a good man.
Coffee, the beloved luxury they had so long renounced, was served with
that supper. But neither of them drank it. Arthur said he wasn't going to
be kept awake two nights running, and after that, Aggie's heart was too
sore to eat or drink anything. He commented bitterly on the waste. He said
he wondered how on earth they were going to pay the doctor's bills, at
that rate.
Aggie pondered. He had lain awake all night thinking of the doctor's
bills, had he? And yet that was just what they were to have no more of.
Anyhow, he had been kept awake; and, of course, that was enough to make
him irritable.
So Aggie thought she would soothe him to sleep. She remembered how he used
to go to sleep sometimes in the evenings when she played. And the music,
she reflected with her bitterness, would cost nothing.
But music, good music, costs more than anything; and Arthur was
fastidious. Aggie's fingers had grown stiff, and their touch had lost its
tenderness. Of their old tricks they remembered nothing, except to stumble
at a "stretchy" chord, a perfect bullfinch of a chord, bristling with
"accidentals," where in their youth they had been apt to shy. Arthur
groaned.
"Oh, Lord, there won't be a wink of sleep for either of us if you wake
that brat again. What on earth possesses you to strum?"
But Aggie was bent, just for the old love of it, and for a little
obstinacy, on conquering that chord.
"Oh, stop it!" he cried. "Can't you find something better to do?"
"Yes," said Aggie, trying to keep her mouth from working, "perhaps I could
find something."
Arthur looked up at her from under his eyebrows, and was ashamed.
She thought still of what she could do for him; and an inspiration came.
He had always loved to listen to her reading. Her voice had not suffered
as her fingers had; and there, in its old place on the shelf, was the
Browning he had given her.
"Would you like me to read to you?"
"Yes," he said, "if you're not too tired." He was touched by the face he
had seen, and by her pathetic efforts; but oh, he thought, if she would
only understand.
She seated herself in the old place opposite him, and read from where the
book fell open of its own accord.
"'O, lyric Love, half angel and half bird'"--
Her voice came stammering like a child's, choked with tenderness and many
memories--
"'And all a wonder and a wild desire--'"
"Oh no, I say, for Heaven's sake, Aggie, not that rot."
"You--you used to like it."
"Oh, I dare say, years ago. I can't stand it now."
"Can't stand it?"
Again he was softened.
"Can't understand it, perhaps, my dear. But it comes to the same thing."
"Yes," said Aggie, "it comes to the same thing."
And she read no more. For the first time, for many years, she understood
him.
That night, as they parted, he did not draw her to him and kiss her; but
he let her tired head lean towards him, and stroked her hair. Her eyes
filled with tears. She laid her forehead on his shoulder.
"Poor Aggie," he said, "poor little woman."
She lifted her head suddenly.
"It's poor you," she whispered, "poor, poor dear."