bag with various instruments, and so much excited was he that he could
hardly refrain from plucking at the doctor's sleeve when they were
hurrying back through the fog to the lodgings in Pomona Terrace. Dr.
Harrison was a young man, scarcely more than thirty, whose manner
carried such assurance that Edward was able to feel that his choice
had been the right one. When they reached the house the doctor was at
once taken upstairs, while Edward, on the suggestion of Mrs. Gallagher,
accommodated himself in the kitchen. Here he found old James Taylor
on one side of the range talking of agriculture to Mr. Gallagher,
a workman in the employ of one of the great railway companies, who
was displaying his agreement or disagreement with, his interest in
or boredom at the farmer's observations only by the way he sucked at
his clay pipe. For an Irishman he was strangely taciturn. From time
to time slatternly young women passed through; but whether they were
the daughters or servants of the Gallaghers or lodgers in the house,
there was no telling. Though Edward took a chair next old Taylor, his
thoughts were upstairs, and the old man's lecture on clovers meant
as little to him as the chirping of the crickets in the walls of the
house. His anxiety over Elizabeth was so sharp that the incongruity
of his surroundings never struck him. His whole being was too much
involved with his wife's for what is called reality to affect him more
nearly than might the incidents of a dream. That he should share a
bedroom with old Taylor, that he should find himself deferring to a
Gallagher, that he should be expected to take his place at an ill-laid
table and eat the malodorous mess there set down by a slut with grimy
hands made no impression upon Edward. Had his mother floated into
this squalid kitchen and pointed a delicate finger in scorn at his
surroundings, he would not have listened one whit less intensely for
the slightest sound from above. Whatever disgusted him in Pomona
Terrace took its place in the general purgatory of deprivation of the
sight of Elizabeth, and the farthest that his mind wandered from that
room upstairs was to that broken slat in the Venetian blinds through
which he had seen that drunken doctor's face. Thank God he had! Thank
God!
A long time passed. Mr. Gallagher had fallen asleep and was snoring
loudly. Old Taylor was asleep too, his jaw dropped upon his chest, his
whole aspect senility incarnate. The restless slatterns no longer moved
in and out with unwashed dishes and bawdy gigglings.
Now the crickets were silent in the glooms; Gallagher had ceased to
snore; there was no sound except an occasional cough from the subsiding
fire. So silent was it that Edward could hear his watch ticking with
what seemed a terrible rapidity in the pocket of his waistcoat. At last
the doctor put his head round the door and beckoned. Edward was beside
him in a moment, gasping forth his alarms.
"She's not dead? Why didn't you call me sooner?"
The doctor gripped Edward's forearm and bade him pull himself together.
That grip in conjunction with the cold air of the passage kept Edward
from breaking down. He compelled himself to follow what the doctor
with a good deal of technical detail was telling him about Elizabeth's
condition. "And so it may be impossible to save the lives of both," the
doctor was murmuring. "However, as I was saying, there is no need to
decide yet, and I am expecting a new instrument to-morrow, which may do
away with the necessity of such a painful decision. I have sent word to
have any parcel which arrives for me brought here immediately."
"Decision?" Edward repeated. "What decision do you mean?"
"Whether we save the life of the mother or the child."
"Are you drunk or mad?" Edward shouted. "Why, rather than she should
suffer an instant's pain I would have the child cut to pieces.
Decision! I believe you're as drunk as that other fellow next door."
The young doctor gazed at Edward in astonishment, for he had heard
nothing of the reason for choosing him in preference to his neighbor.
"I was bound to give you the opportunity of deciding," he explained.
"Naturally I did not for a moment expect you to give any other answer
but the one you have given. I'm sorry to have upset you like this. If
I may offer you some sound advice, I should recommend your staying
quietly in the kitchen. It would be better, of course, if you could
manage to lie down and sleep for a while; but I can understand that
you are too anxious for that. You must not work yourself up into a
state of mind. There is no immediate cause for anxiety. No, certainly
no immediate cause."
Edward allowed the doctor to steer him back into the kitchen where
their entrance roused old James Taylor and Mr. Gallagher, both of whom
with loud yawns declared their intention of going to bed. Soon Edward
was left alone, for Dr. Harrison went back to his patient, and he
settled himself down to solitary meditation by what was left of the
dead fire in the still fairly warm grate.
It was easy, thought Edward, very easy for that young doctor to talk
about childbirth as if it were nothing more than buying a doll in a
shop. Doctors soon began to lose their sense of the soul in their
familiarity with the body. What did a man like that know about the
great mystery of human love? Edward's mind went back to his talk with
the Vicar of Barton Flowers on the vigil of his wedding; and now
thinking over his brief married life with Elizabeth he apprehended
all the truth of what the parson had said. He remembered how much the
conversation had elated him at the time and how he had felt an impulse
to submit himself to the promptings of what the Vicar had called the
Grace of the Holy Spirit. That impulse like so many of them, alas,
had gone the way of the rest, had been allowed to expire when the
enthusiasm of thought demanded the breath of action to endure. Edward
vowed that this time if Elizabeth's life should be granted to him he
really would ... what? "I really will grapple with life," he promised
to that nebulous emanation of celestial magic which the ordinary man
calls God. "Before the sun rises to-morrow morning I may be a father.
I shall owe a duty to a human soul which I have brought into the
world." Edward discovered with shame that this child, which might
even at this moment be uttering its first cry to the darkness of the
unimaginable universe around it, had not until this moment presented
itself to him as a fact. He regretted now the way he had answered the
doctor's question a short while ago. He had been sneering to himself
at the doctor's point of view about childbirth; but he should rather
have sneered at himself for what he was, a weak and self-indulgent and
careless egoist that without foresight and without responsibility might
become the parent of a human being from whom in days to come he should
expect gratitude, affection, and obedience.
Edward made new vows to that dim God beyond the stars that if he were
granted not only the life of his Elizabeth, but also the life of their
child, he would devote his future to a worthy fatherhood, that even
if himself should fail in his contest with life he would ... what?
Edward's mind wandered already to the agony of his adored wife, and he
could not bear to contemplate any future at all until he knew that she
was safe.
Safe! The word wrote itself in the cracks of the dingy ceiling, in the
pattern of the grimy wall-paper, in the ashes of the dead fire, in the
scrolls of iron-work upon the range, in the patchwork hearthrug, in the
knots and lines of the kitchen table. Safe! The word acquired such a
force and power of its own that Edward almost worshiped it by repeating
aloud the mere sound of it in apostrophe after apostrophe of awful
contemplation. Safe! He clutched at the S as he would have clutched at
a rope to drag himself up from the abyss below. He climbed up the A,
up the F, up the E to stand on the high ground above with Elizabeth
clasped in his arms ... with her ... with his darling ... safe....
Edward fell asleep. At four o'clock Mrs. Gallagher came down to tell
him that things were going on as well as could be expected upstairs,
recommending him to be off and lie down on his bed like a Christian.
The only place where Edward wanted to lie down was on the landing
outside the door of Elizabeth's room; but there was still enough left
of the younger son of Sir Richard Flower to keep him from making such a
proposal to the landlady.
It was like Edward to insist on staying in the kitchen. There was about
it the kind of ineffective Quixotry to which he had been addicted all
his life. At seven Dr. Harrison came in and made him comparatively
happy by asking him to go round to his house, wait for the postal
delivery, and bring back any package that might by good luck be left.
The doctor wanted to add that Edward would do well to ask his servant
to give him some breakfast, there being little likelihood of his eating
any breakfast in Pomona Terrace. On second thoughts, he did not think
the suggestion worth making. He felt too much fatigued by his own
all-night vigil to argue with an unbalanced fool like this husband.
Such was the young doctor's mood on this drear January morning. Edward
hurried through the wet twilight, pale, unshaven, his hair and whiskers
unkempt, his collar dirty, his clothes frowsy from the kitchen where
he had spent the night. At such an hour Manning Crescent looked more
dilapidated than on the night before, and the broken slat in the
Venetian blinds of the drunken doctor next door gave the last touch of
raffish squalor to the row of houses.
No sooner was Edward seated in the doctor's neat consulting-room than
he fell into a despair, because he had not seen Elizabeth before he
came out. Suppose she were dead when he arrived back? He could hardly
stay in the room; the smell of disinfectants here was stifling him
with an aroma of death. It was only by clutching the arms of the chair
covered with red rep and dinning into his brain the need to wait for
that blessed instrument which was so anxiously awaited by the doctor
that he was able not to desert his post. He rang for the maid to ask
when the parcel delivery might be expected, and upon her telling him
"ten o'clock at the earliest" he groaned aloud.
It was actually eleven o'clock when Edward, after spending hours of
uncertainty, ran back to Pomona Terrace with a parcel for Dr. Harrison.
"It has arrived at the very moment I required it," said the doctor,
hurrying upstairs without waiting to give Edward a word of hope about
his wife's condition beyond his satisfied comment on the arrival of the
new instrument.
On the husband left standing in the dim passage of the Gallaghers'
lodging-house dawned the apprehension of God's mercy to him in
directing his footsteps yesterday evening to where lived probably the
only doctor in the neighborhood who would have a chance of saving that
beloved woman's life. He fell upon his knees where he stood and prayed
that God's mercy should be extended to the fulfillment of all he hoped.
Then he went back to the kitchen. At last Mrs. Gallagher entered all
smiles.
"You may come up now," she told him. "All's well, praise be to the Holy
Mother of God, and you've a girleen."
"A what?" shouted old James Taylor from his chair by the fire.
"'Tis you that's a great-grandfather, Mr. Taylor," she told the old man.
"A' look now," chuckled old James. "They ought to put I in a show. 'Tis
a state of life you can see in rams and bulls when you've a mind, but
darn'ee, a real great-grandfather is summat to stare at even in London."
Edward was kneeling beside Elizabeth before the old man had finished
his sentence. The doctor left them together.
"You haven't asked to look at baby," Elizabeth murmured reproachfully.
She lifted the bedclothes for a moment, while Edward looked.
"Yours," he murmured.
"Ours," she corrected. "Ours, my dearest."
"But it was you that suffered everything!"
"But you were anxious about me, weren't you, my darling?" she tenderly
asked.
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" he cried.
She knew how much he too had suffered, and because he did not speak of
his emotions she was moved with an immense desire not to let her baby
make her careless of her husband. She put out her hand to stroke his
head.
"I thought about you all the time," she whispered. "When the pain was
worst I kept saying, 'Edward! Edward!' Nothing else. Only that, my
darling."
He drew her hands to his lips.
"And what shall she be christened?" the mother asked. "I'd like her to
be called Mary," she went on breathlessly. "You wouldn't think that a
common name, would you? 'Mary Flower,' I think that's a pretty name."
The doctor came in at this moment to suggest that Edward had stayed
long enough for the present. The father leant over to kiss the eyes of
that pale mother.
"Well, have 'ee seen her?" demanded the great-grandfather when Edward
came downstairs. "I suppose it is a girl all right?"
"Mary," said Edward.
"Oh, Mary, is it to be? Well, that's a good down-right honest style of
name for a girl. Yes, 'tis a name I like very well. And don't you be
discouraged, Mr. Edward, if she don't look beautiful all at once. A
calf's different. A new-born calf is a pretty sight for any man. So's a
chicken fresh from the egg. But a baby is so ugly as a young rook. Oh
dear, oh dear, there's few more ugly sights for man to look upon than a
new-born baby. Yet I suppose this time come three months we shall all
be looking at kangaroos and wobblies, and they're worse by what one
reads of 'em."
Old James had got hold of one or two volumes of Antipodean travel, from
dipping into which behind a pair of large horn spectacles he had formed
a picture of Australia as zoölogically rich as a medieval illuminator's
conception of Eden.
Now that Elizabeth's child was safely born, it was imperative to leave
England before the money gave out, and berths were secured in the
_Wizard Queen_, a 1,000-ton steamer lying in the East India Docks,
which was due to sail on February 18th for the port of Sydney. They
went on board the preceding afternoon; but remembering their last
experience in the _Mariana_ and with a desire to avert ill-luck they
kept themselves out of sight of the other emigrants who, like those on
the Mersey, were drowning the sorrow of departure in music and song. As
a matter of fact, old James could not resist going up on deck to have a
bit of fun, as he called it; but Edward and Elizabeth remained close in
their cabin, and did not even emerge for supper.
After supper the strains of music that floated down below became more
melancholy, so that Elizabeth shivered. Edward, always solicitous,
begged her to tell him what was the matter. Did she feel nervous after
that alarming night on the Mersey? Did she regret that she had married
him? Was not the baby Mary sleeping soundly in her canvas cot, and was
she not so wonderful a being that sighs should be forgotten in the
contemplation of the future they two would sacrifice all to achieve for
her?
"I was thinking of you, Edward," she said. "I was wondering if I had
done wrong in marrying you, so that you have had to leave your family
and your country for my sake."
"It is not your fault," Edward exclaimed, "that we are all going to
Australia. If my father had not shown himself so bitter against me,
if my mother had not lost all affection for me, we should still be in
Long Orchard Farm. I beg you, my dearest, not to distress yourself with
regrets. Besides, look at her." He pointed to the sleeping infant.
"What do we matter now? We have given _her_ to the world. There never
was such a baby girl. Just think, my Elizabeth, what you endured, what
even I endured? And now look at her. Remember how fortune was on her
side. I was never a religious man, but since that night in January I
have been made conscious of a divine power that directs the universe.
In the miracle of that small but perfect being born to you and me I
have understood the great miracle of creation."
Elizabeth regarded her husband with admiration and awe.
"You have such noble thoughts," she flattered him. "But I cannot think
like you. I can only remember the meadows where I played as a child
and the clematis over the door and the cocks crowing on fine mornings
in the summer-time. And now I'm leaving all that. And grandfather is
leaving it. And you, my Edward, are being taken far over the sea to
another country, and all because I selfishly loved you and selfishly
let you love me."
The notes of a melody more sad than any which had yet been played
drifted below from the deck. Elizabeth's tears fell fast like raindrops
upon the petals of a rose. Nor could Edward's most tender words console
her grief, nor could they mitigate her apprehensiveness nor lighten the
gloom in which for her the future was enveloped. It was not until her
grandfather came tapping at their cabin door, in which a moment later
he stood framed with his ruddy and jocund countenance, that she smiled.
"I've enjoyed myself rarely," he announced. "There's been singing
up there as would put the heart in any man. There was never better
fiddling in Barton Flowers, not when I was a nipper. I'm bothered if I
han't enjoyed myself. Sleep like a top, the saying is. Bothered if I
shan't sleep like a humming-top to-night."
He wished them well and stumped off to his berth.
"You see how happy the old man is!" Edward exclaimed.
And Elizabeth, now that the music had ceased to play upon her emotion,
forgot her fears. In the morning when they went on deck London was
sailing past them on either side of the ship, and a sharp wind from the
northwest made the voyagers long for warm and sunny lands.
Among the emigrants was a middle-aged couple called Fawcus, both of
whom showed themselves most friendly to the Flowers, and both of whom
much admired the good behavior of the baby girl. Mr. Fawcus was a
large, smooth-faced man of fifty, definitely parsonic in the general
impression he gave with his suit of black broadcloth, a primness of
manner that was noticeable in so large a man, and an inclination to
discourse in rotund sentences. His wife was in every way a contrast to
her husband, being small, restless, and quick-eyed, a woman obviously
belonging to an inferior class, but who in spite of her Cockney accent
and vulgarity was obviously the leader and looked after her husband as
sharply as a capable and well-trained nurse.
"I hope Mr. Micawber will still be alive when we reach Australia," said
Edward. "Nobody else could keep pace with our friend."
"You haven't spoken of Mr. Micawber before, dear," said Elizabeth
reproachfully. "I didn't know you had any friends in Australia."
"Mr. Micawber is a character in one of Mr. Charles Dickens' novels," he
explained.
"Mr. Dickens who wrote the _Christmas Carol_?" Elizabeth asked.
"The same."
"He must be a very nice gentleman," was her murmured comment.
Edward laughed.
Mr. Fawcus according to himself had been reduced to emigration by the
devotion of his energy, his talents, and his money to the great cause
of popular education.
"My survey of history," he told Edward, "taught me that all the
greatest human beings have been teachers. I determined, however humbly,
to follow in their footsteps."
According to Mrs. Fawcus her husband's mistake had been first in
wasting money on derelict schools, and secondly in destroying whatever
chance such schools had of recovery by preaching in the open air of the
locality on Sundays.
"People couldn't a-bear to send their children to Mr. Fawcus's school
when they saw him preaching in the market-place like any heathen
missionary. It gave them the idea he was funny, and so the scholars'ud
leave until there wasn't one left, and then Mr. Fawcus had to move to
another town and start over again with another school. Besides, I was
always a hindrance to him."
"You were never a hindrance, my love."
"Oh, yes, I was, Mr. Fawcus, and well you know it. The truth is
parents don't want a homely woman like me for a teacher. They look for
something quite different in a school-mistress, something tall and
starchy."
"And what are you going to do in Australia?" Edward asked.
"In Australia, my dear sir," Mr. Fawcus boomed, "in Australia I am
going to educate the aborigines, who I understand from the reports of
travelers are considered the most degraded race of human beings on this
earth. Should that prove truer than the majority of travelers' tales
there must be room for education. After my experience with the children
of...."
"Hush!" his wife interjected. "Hush, Mr. Fawcus!"
"After my experience with the last school I founded in England the
aborigines of Australia will be easy to manage. Their women, I believe,
are known as ginns. A most unbecoming designation. I shall try to
persuade them to abolish that name. The sea is rising, I observe
with regret. We are liable to pass a rough night, I fear. And I am
usually right. In fact, my intimates often nickname me Mr. Forecast.
My own name, by the way, is remarkable, don't you think? I have been
tempted to speculate upon its origin, and I have sometimes fancied
that it might be found among the _senatus populusque Romanus_. I was
informed the other day, however, by a gentleman of curious etymological
knowledge that it is probably a local variant of Fawkes. You of course
remember Guy of that ilk? Yes, the sky is looking very dirty indeed."
A steely dusk of northwest weather lay chill upon the _Wizard Queen_
when she was tossing in the Downs, and by night the wind was blowing
with hurricane fury from the Kentish coast. The music and motion of the
storm kept all on board awake, and when about three o'clock there was
a crash followed by a dreadful sound of grinding timbers, the faces of
the terrified passengers immediately appeared from every cabin.
Edward bade his wife wrap up the baby while he found out what had
happened, and with only an overcoat over his nightshirt he forced his
way on deck. From the darkness on the port side a shape seemed to carve
itself to the fleeting likeness of another vessel, but it vanished so
quickly that Edward fancied the vision to be a chimera of the night.
"All hands to lower the boats," a voice cried from forward in the murk
of the night. Figures in dripping oilskins, like monsters risen from
the sea, pushed Edward aside to get at their business; but he managed
to make his way back aft to where from the orange mist above the
saloon-companion a stream of disheveled passengers belched forth like
smoke waving in the blast. As he fought his way down to find Elizabeth
and the old man, he heard another shout for'ard.
"The port lifeboat was smashed in the collision."
The saloon was empty when Edward reached it, and he was on the point of
turning back to begin a distracted search on deck when Elizabeth came
out of her cabin carrying the baby, her hair all about her shoulders,
her aspect serene. She looked fragile, ethereal indeed, but amid all
that confusion of human terror into which she must shortly be plunged
she moved forward with the resolution of an angel. Behind her came the
old man wrapped in a plaid shawl above his nightshirt, his face ruddy
as ever, but his old legs appearing thin as twigs beneath, so that it
seemed as if he must be blown away into the night when he should face
the storm.
The crew was lowering the jolly-boat full of passengers when they
reached the deck. Notwithstanding the peril, for the ship would not
float another ten minutes it was being shouted, two of the sailors were
arguing angrily about the rig of the craft that struck the _Wizard
Queen_. One declared with an oath that it was a schooner; the other
affirmed with equal vigor that it had been a barquantine. A ship's
officer hurrying by fell to cursing them for rascals that they should
stand there arguing when the starboard lifeboat must be launched.
"Women and children first," the captain thundered.
A fiercer squall drummed overhead, and the emigrants that still
remained in the ship huddled together in fear of that dreadful brew
of waters upon which they were soon to float away. Somebody urged
Elizabeth toward the lifeboat; but she drew back.
"Let somebody go instead of me. I'll wait for my husband," she said.
But it happened that she was the last woman left and that there was
still room for Edward and old James, so that presently all three
climbed into the lifeboat.
"Lower away!"