The day on which Howard learned that Maud would bear him a child was a
day of very strangely mixed emotions. He saw how the hope dawned on the
spirit of Maud like the rising of a star, and he could rejoice in that
with whole-hearted joy, in the mere sharing of a beautiful secret; but
it was strange to him to see how to Maud it seemed like the realisation
and fulfilling of all desire, the entering into a kingdom; it was not
only the satisfaction of all the deepest vital processes, but something
glorious, unthinkable, the crowning of destiny, the summit of life.
There was no reasoning about it; it was the purest and finest instinct.
But with Howard it was not thus. He could not look beyond Maud; and it
seemed to him like the dawning of a new influence, a new fealty, which
would almost come in between him and his wife, a division of her
affections. She seemed to him, in the few tremulous words they spoke,
to have her eyes fixed on something beyond him; it was not so much a
gift that she was bringing him as a claim of further devotion. He
realised with a shock of surprise that in the books he had read, in the
imagined crises of life, the thought of the child, the heir, the
offshoot, was supposed to come as the crown of father's and mother's
hopes alike, and that it was not so with him. Was he jealous of the new
claim? It was something like that. He found himself resolving and
determining that no hint of this should ever escape him; he even felt
deeply ashamed that such a thought should even have crossed his mind.
He ought rather to rejoice wholly and completely in Maud's happiness;
but he desired her alone, and so passionately that he could not bear to
have any part of the current of her soul diverted from him. As he
looked forward through the years, it was Maud and himself, in scene
after scene; other relations, other influences, other surroundings
might fade and decay--but children, however beautiful and delightful,
making the house glad with life and laughter, he was not sure that he
wanted them. Yet he had always thought that he possessed a strong
paternal instinct, an interest in young life, in opening problems. Had
that all, he wondered, been a mere interest, a thing to exercise his
energy and amiability upon, and had his enjoyment of it all depended
upon his real detachment, upon the fact that his responsibility was
only a temporary one? It was all very bewildering to him. Moreover, his
quiet and fertile imagination flashed suddenly through pictures of what
his beloved Maud might have to endure, such a frail child as she
was--illness, wretchedness, suffering. Would he be equal to all that?
Could he play the role of tranquil patience, of comforting sympathy? He
determined not to anticipate that, but it blew like a cold wind on his
spirit; he could not bear that the sunshine of life should be clouded.
He had a talk with his aunt on the subject; she had divined, in some
marvellous way, the fact that the news had disturbed him; and she said,
"Of course, dear Howard, I quite understand that this is not the same
thing to you as it is to Maud and me. It is one of the things which
divide, and must always divide, men from women. But there is something
beyond what you see: I know that it must seem to you as if something
almost disconcerting had passed over life--as if such a hope must
absorb the heart of a mother; but there is a thing you cannot know, and
that is the infinite dearness in which this involves you. You would
think perhaps that it could not be increased in Maud's case, but it is
increased a hundredfold--it is a splendour, a worship, as of divine
creative power. Don't be afraid! Don't look forward! You will see day
by day that this has brought Maud's love for you to a point of which
you could hardly dream. Words can't touch these things: you must just
believe me that it is so. You will think that a childless wife like
myself cannot know this. There is a strange joy even in childlessness,
but it is the joy that comes from the sharing of a sorrow; but the joy
which comes from sharing a joy is higher yet."
"Yes," said Howard, "I know it, and I believe it. I will tell you very
frankly that you have looked into my very heart; but you have not seen
quite into the depths: I see my own weakness and selfishness clearly.
With every part of my mind and reason I see the wonder and strength of
this; and I shall feel it presently. What has shocked me is just my
lack of the truer instinct; but then," he added, smiling, "that's just
the shadow of comfort and ease and the intellectual life: one goes so
far on one's way without stumbling across these big emotions; and when
one does actually meet them, one is frightened at their size and
strength. You must advise and help me. You know, I am sure, that my
love for Maud is the strongest, largest, purest thing, beyond all
comparison and belief, that has ever happened to me. I am never for a
single instant unaware of it. I sometimes think there is nothing else
left of me; and then this happens, and I see that I have not gone deep
enough yet."
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, smiling, "life is like the sea, I think. When
one is a child, it is just a great plain of waters, with little ships
sailing on it: it is pleasant to play by, with breaking waves to wade
in, and little treasures thrown up on its rim; then, as one knows more,
one realises that it is another world, full of its own urgent life,
quite regardless of man, and over which man has no power, except by a
little trickery in places. Man is just a tiresome, far-off incident,
his ships like little moving shadows, his nets and lines like small
fretful devices. But the old wise monsters of the depths live their own
lives; never seen perhaps, or even suspected, by men. That's all very
silly and fanciful, of course! But old and invalided as I am, I seem to
be diving deeper and deeper into life, and finding it full of surprises
and mysteries and utterly unexpected things."
"Well," said Howard, "I am still a child on the shore, picking up
shells, fishing in the shallows. But I have learned something of late,
and it is wonderful beyond thought--so wonderful that I feel sometimes
as if I was dreaming, and should wake up to find myself in some other
century!"
It did indeed soon dawn upon Howard that there was a change in Maud,
that their relations had somehow altered and deepened. The little
barrier of age, for one thing, which he had sometimes felt, seemed
obliterated. There had been in Howard's mind a sense that he had known
a number of hard facts and ugly features about life, had been aware of
mean, combative, fierce, cruel elements which were hidden from Maud.
Now this all seemed to be purged away; if these things were there, they
were not worth knowing, except to be disregarded. They were base
material knowledge which one must not even recognise; they were not
real forces at all, only ugly, stubborn obstacles, through which life
must pass, like water flowing among rocks; they were not life, only the
channel of life, through which one passed to something more free and
generous. He began to perceive that such things mattered nothing at all
to Maud; that her life would have been just as fine in quality if she
had lived in the smallest cottage among the most sordid cares. He saw
that she possessed the wisdom which he had missed, because she lived in
and for emotion and affection, and that all material things existed
only to enshrine and subserve emotion.
Their life seemed to take on a new colour and intensity. They talked
less; up till now it had been a perpetual delight to Howard to elicit
Maud's thoughts and fancies about a thousand things, about books,
people, ideas. Her prejudices, ignorances, enthusiasms half charmed,
half amused him. But now they could sit or walk silent together in an
even more tranquil happiness; nearness was enough, and thought seemed
to pass between them without need of speech. Howard began to resume his
work; it was enough that Maud should sit by, reading, working, writing.
A glance would pass between them and suffice.
One day Howard laid down his pen, and looking up, having finished a
chapter, saw that Maud's eyes were fixed upon him with an anxious
intentness. She was sitting in a low chair near the fire, and an open
book lay disregarded on her knee. He went across to her and sat down on
a low chair beside her, taking her hand in his.
"What is it, dear child?" he said. "Am I very selfish and stupid to sit
here without a word like this?"
Maud put her lips to his hand, and laughed a contented laugh. "Oh no,
no," she said; "I like to see you hard at work--there seems no need to
say anything--it's just you and me!"
"Well," said Howard, "you must just tell me what you were thinking--you
had travelled a long way beyond that."
"Not out of your reach," said Maud; "I was just thinking how different
men and women were, and how I liked you to be different. I was
remembering how awfully mysterious you were at first--so full to the
brim of strange things which I could not fathom. I always seemed to be
dislodging something I had never thought of. I used to wonder how you
could find time, in the middle of it all, to care about me: you were
always giving me something. But now it has all grown so much simpler
and more wonderful too. It's like what you said about Cambridge long
ago, the dark secret doorways, the hidden gardens; I see now that all
those ideas and thoughts are only things you are carrying with you,
like luggage. They are not part of you at all. Don't you know how, when
one is quite a child, a person's house seems to be all a mysterious
part of himself? One thinks he has chosen and arranged it all, knows
where everything is and what it means--everything seems to be a sort of
deliberate expression of his tastes and ideas--and, then one gets
older, and finds out that people don't know what is in their houses at
all--there are rooms into which they never go; and then one finds that
they don't even see the things in their own rooms, have forgotten how
they came there, wouldn't know if they were taken away. My, I used to
feel as if the scents and smells of houses were all arranged and chosen
by their owners. It's like that with you; all the things you know and
remember, the words you speak, are not YOU at all; I see and feel you
now apart from all that."
"I am afraid I have lost what novelists call my glamour," said Howard.
"You have found me out, the poor, shivering, timid thing that sits like
a wizard in the middle of his properties, only hoping that the stuffed
crocodile and the skeleton will frighten his visitors."
Maud laughed. "Well, I am not frightened any more," she said. "I doubt
if you could frighten me if you tried. I wonder how I should feel if I
saw you angry or chilly. Are you ever angry, I wonder?"
"I think some of my pupils would say that I could be very
disagreeable," said Howard. "I don't think that I was ever very fierce,
but I have realised that I was on occasions very unpleasant."
"Well, I'll wait and see," said Maud; "but what I was going to say was
that you seem to me different--hardly the person I married. I used to
wonder a little at first how I had had the impudence . . . and then I
used to think that perhaps some day you would wake up, and find you had
come to the bottom of the well, but you never seemed disappointed."
"Disappointed!" said Howard; "what terrible rubbish! Why Maud, don't
you KNOW what you have done for me? You have put the whole thing
straight. It's just that. I was full of vanities and thoughts and bits
of knowledge, and I really think I thought them important--they ARE
important too, like food and drink--one must have them--at least men
must--but they don't matter; at least it doesn't matter what they are.
Men have always to be making and doing things--business, money,
positions, duties; but the point is to know that they are unimportant,
and yet to go on doing them as if they mattered--one must do
that--seriously and not solemnly; but you have somehow put all that in
the right place; and I know now what matters and what does not. There,
do you call that nothing?"
"Perhaps we have found it out together," said Maud; "the only
difference is that you have the courage to tell me that you were wrong,
while I have never even dared to tell you what a hollow sham I am, and
what a mean and peevish child I was before you came on the scene."
"Well, we won't look into your dark past," said Howard. "I am quite
content with what they call the net result!" and then they sate
together in silence, and had no further need of words.