The child was a boy. It had perfect features, like a miniature Joyce,
but after a glance and a whimpering cry, she wouldn’t look at it again.
Bertram knelt by his wife’s bedside, trying to hide the wetness of his
eyes. She put her thin fingers through his hair and caressed him, but
after a short time said, “You worry me, rather,” so that the nurse
signalled to him to go away.
Bertram had felt an immense sense of relief at the sight of Joyce lying
at peace after her ordeal. She was faintly flushed, and had all her
beauty back, with a youthful, almost boyish look, touched by the
character of her “bobbed” hair.
He turned at the door and glanced back at her, and when she opened her
eyes again he kissed his hand to her with all his heart in that gesture
of love, but she shut her eyes without response.
During his first reaction to the knowledge that Joyce was safe he had
not worried over the death of the baby, except for Joyce’s sake. It was
only later that he began to think of the child. Something of himself lay
dead in that cradle in the dressing-room to which it had been carried by
the nurse. If it had lived—
His imagination wandered through the years ahead. There would have been
a companion for him, a little pal. He would have taught the boy to ride,
to play games, to face up to life, to be a gentleman. Not a snob! No, he
would have taught him to be tolerant, and “democratic” in old Christy’s
way, with understanding of folk in the mean streets of life. He could
have told that son of his something of the men he had commanded in the
war, those Cockney fellows who had been all nerves and all pluck with a
wonderful sense of humour. His son! . . . Young Bertram! . . . How fine
that would have been! Life would have been less lonely—and, Lord! how
lonely it had been with Joyce upstairs, and a nurse in the house, and
the two maids whispering about the passages while he sat alone in his
“study” with nothing in the world to study except his introspective
thoughts! . . .
That night he went on tip-toe to the dressing-room, turned up the
electric light, and drew back the coverlet from the face of the
still-born child. His son! What a queer mite! Like a wax doll, with
something of Joyce’s look, and something, perhaps, of his own. He kissed
the tiny dead face, and then drew back sharply because of its coldness.
Not that he was afraid of death. He had seen many men die, and dead. But
this little thing was Joyce’s babe. That was piteous! After all her
suffering! Oh, God! . . . Was it for the best? Had God been kind? There
was something in life now which seemed to spoil things. Some trouble
seemed to be brewing for further tragedy. That was what old Christy
thought. The old foundations were slipping away. The War had shaken them
too much. The next generation might have to go through worse things than
their fathers. Fathers who had been good soldiers but not much good in
time of peace, and found it hard to get a decent job!
Bertram Pollard covered the face of the still-born child, switched off
the light, and went downstairs again. He wrote out an advertisement for
_The Times_—Joyce’s friends would want to know—and then, for hours,
sat brooding until he fell asleep, and was only wakened by the “Lor’,
sir!” of the parlourmaid, Edith, who came in to tidy his room. She was
very sorry for him, and said so in her chatty way.