Matoaca City.June 6, 1885.
Matoaca City.June 6, 1885.
Darling Mother:
The little patterns were exactly what I wanted—thank you a thousand times. I knew you would be overjoyed at the news, and you are the only person I've breathed it to—except, of course, dear Oliver, who is frightened to death already. He has made me stop everything at once, and whenever he sees me lift my hand, he begins to get nervous and begs me not to do it. Oh, mother, he loves me so that it is really pathetic to see his anxiety. And—can you believe it—he doesn't appear to be the least bit glad about it. When I told him, he looked amazed—as if he had never thought of its happening—and said, "Oh, Virginia, not so soon!" He told me afterwards that, of course, he'd always thought we'd have children after a while, before we were middle-aged, but that he had wanted to stay like this for at least five or ten years. When the baby comes, he says he supposes he'll like it, but that he can't honestly say he is glad. It's funny how frightened he is, because I am not the least bit so. All women must expect to have children when they marry, and if God makes them suffer for it, it must be because it is best that they should. Perhaps they wouldn't love their babies so much if they got them easily. I never think of the pain a minute. It all seems so beautiful and sacred to me that I can't understand why Oliver isn't enraptured just as I am. To think of a new life starting into the world from me—a life that is half mine and half Oliver's, and one that would never be at all except for our love. The baby will seem from the very first minute to be our love made into flesh. I don't see how a woman who feels this could waste a thought on what she has to suffer.
I am so glad you are going to send me a nurse from Dinwiddie, because I'm afraid I could never get one here that I could trust. The servant Oliver got me is no earthly account, and I still do as much of the cooking as I can. The house doesn't look nearly so nice as it used to, but the doctor tells me that I mustn't sweep, so I only do the light dusting. I sew almost all the time, and I've already finished the little slips. To-day I'm going to cut out the petticoats. I couldn't tell from the pattern you sent whether they fasten in front or in the back. There are no places for buttonholes. Do you use safety pins to fasten them with? The embroidery is perfectly lovely, and will make the sweetest trimming. I am using pink for the basket because Oliver and I both hope the baby will be a girl. If it is, I shall name her after you, of course, and I want her to be just exactly like you. Oliver says he can't understand why anybody ever wants a boy—girls are so much nicer. But then he insists that if she isn't born with blue eyes, he will send her to the orphanage.
I am trying to do just as you tell me to, and to be as careful as I possibly can. The doctor thinks I've stayed indoors too much since I came here, so I go out for a little walk with Oliver every night. I am so afraid that somebody will see me that I really hate to go out at all, and always choose the darkest streets I can find. Last night I had a bad stumble, and Oliver says he doesn't care if the whole town discovers us, he's not going to take me down any more unlighted alleys.
It has been terribly hot all day—not a breath of air stirring—and I never felt the heat so much in my life. The doctor says it's because of my condition—and last night, after Oliver went to sleep, I got up and sat by the window until daybreak. At first I was dreadfully frightened, and thought I was going to stifle—but poor Oliver had come home so tired that I made up my mind I wasn't going to wake him if I could possibly help it. This morning I didn't tell him a word about it, and he hasn't the least idea that I didn't sleep soundly all night. I suppose that's why I feel so dragged and worn out to-day, just as if somebody had given me a good beating. I was obliged to lie down most of the afternoon, but I am going to take a bath in a few minutes and try to make myself look nice and fresh before Oliver comes home. I have let out that flowered organdie—the one you liked so much—and I wear it almost every evening. I know I look dreadfully, but Oliver says I am more beautiful than ever. It seems to me sometimes that men are born blind where women are concerned, but perhaps God made it that way on purpose. Do you know Oliver really admires Mrs. Payson, and he thinks that red feather very becoming to her. He says she's much too good for her husband, but I have been obliged to disagree with him about that. Even if Mr. Payson does drink a little, I am sure it is only because he gets lonesome when he is left by himself, and that she could prevent it if she tried. Oliver and I never talk about these things because he sees that I feel so strongly about them.
Oh, darling mother, I shall be so glad to see you! I hope and pray that father will be well enough for you to come a whole month ahead. In that case you will be here in less than two months, won't you? If the baby comes on the twelfth of August, she (I am perfectly sure it will be a girl) and father will have the same birthday. I am so anxious that she shall be born on that day.
Well, I must stop now, though I could run on forever. I never see a living soul from one day to another—Mrs. Payson is out of town—so when Oliver stays late at the office, and I am too tired to work, I get a little—just a little bit lonesome. Mr. Payson sent me a pile of novels by Oliver the other night—but I haven't looked into them. I always feel that it is a waste of time to read when there are things about the house that ought to be done. I wish everything didn't cost so much here. Money doesn't go half as far as it does in Dinwiddie. The price of meat is almost three times as much as it is at home, and chickens are so expensive that we have them only twice a week. It is hard to housekeep on a small allowance, and now that we have to save for the baby's coming, I have to count every penny. I have bought a little book like yours, and I put down all that I spend during the day, and then add it up at night before going to bed. Oliver says I'm dreadfully frugal, but I am always so terribly afraid of running over my allowance (which is every cent that we can afford) and not having the money to pay the doctor's bills when they are due. Nobody could be more generous with money than Oliver is—I couldn't endure being married to a stingy man like Mr. Treadwell—and the other day when one of the men in the office died, he sent the most beautiful wreath that cost ten dollars. I am trying to save enough out of the housekeeping balance to pay for it, for Oliver always runs out of his pocket money before the middle of the month. I haven't bought anything for the baby because you sent me all the materials I needed, and I have been sewing on those ever since they came. Of course my own clothes are still as good as new, so the only expense will be the doctor and the nurse and the extra things I shall be obliged to have to eat when I am sick.
Give dear father a dozen kisses from me, and tell him to hurry and get well so he can christen his granddaughter.
Your devoted and ever gratefulVirginia.
Matoaca City.August 11, 1885.
Matoaca City.August 11, 1885.
Darling Mother:
Just a line to say that I am so, so sorry you can't come, but that you mustn't worry a minute, because everything is going beautifully, and I am not the least bit afraid. The doctor says he never saw any one in a better frame of mind or so little nervous. Give my dear love to father. I am so distressed that he should suffer as he does. Rheumatism must be such terrible pain, and I don't wonder that you are frightened lest it should go to his heart. I shall send you a telegram as soon as the baby comes.
Your devoted daughter,Virginia.
Matoaca City.August 29, 1885.
Matoaca City.August 29, 1885.
My Precious Mother:
This is the first time I have sat up in bed, and I am trying to write a little note to you on a pillow instead of a desk. My hand shakes so that I'm afraid you won't be able to read it, but I felt that I wanted to send you a few words of my very own, not dictated to the nurse or to Mrs. Payson. I can't tell you how perfectly lovely Mrs. Payson has been to me. She was here all that dreadful night, and I believe I should have died without her. The doctor said I had such a hard time because I'd let myself get run down and stayed indoors too much. But I'm getting all right now—and the rest is over and doesn't matter. As soon as I am strong again I shall be perfectly happy.
Oh, mother, aren't you delighted that the baby is a girl, after all? It was the first question I asked when I came back to consciousness the next morning, and when they told me it was, I said, "Her name is Lucy Pendleton," and that was all. I was so weak they wouldn't let me open my lips again, and Oliver was kept out of the room for almost ten days because I would talk to him. Poor fellow, it almost killed him. He is as white as a sheet still, and looks as if he had been through tortures. It must have been terrible for him, because I was really very, very ill at one time.
But it is all over now, and the baby is the sweetest thing you ever imagined. I believe she knows me already, and Mrs. Payson says she is exactly like me, though I can see the strongest resemblance to Oliver, even if she has blue eyes and he hasn't. Wasn't it lovely how everything came just as we wanted it to—a girl, born on father's birthday, with blue eyes, and named Lucy? But, mother, darling, the most wonderful thing of all was that you seemed to be with me all through it. The whole time I was unconscious I thought you were here, and the nurse tells me that I was calling "Mother! Mother!" all that night. Nothing ever made me feel as close to you as having a baby of my own. I never knew before what you were to me, and how dearly, dearly I love you.
The nurse is taking the pencil away from me.
Your lovingVirginia.
Isn't it funny that Oliver won't take any interest in the baby at all? He says she caused more trouble than she is worth. Was father like that?
Matoaca City.April 3, 1886.
Matoaca City.April 3, 1886.
Dearest Mother:
My last letter was written an age ago, but I have been so busy since Marthy left that I've hardly had a moment in which to draw breath. It was a blow to me that she wouldn't stay for she was really an excellent nurse and the baby got on so well with her, but there aren't any coloured people of her kind here, and she got so homesick for Dinwiddie that I thought she would lose her mind if she stayed. You know how dependent they are upon company, and going out on Sunday afternoon and all that kind of thing, and there really wasn't any amusement for her except taking the baby out in the morning. She got so low spirited that it was almost a relief when she went, but of course I feel her loss dreadfully. I haven't let the baby out of my sight because I wouldn't trust Daisy with her for anything in the world. She is so terribly flighty. I have the crib brought into my room (though Oliver hates it) and I take entire charge of her night and day. I should love to do it if only Oliver didn't mind it so much. He says I think more of the baby now than I do of him. Isn't that absurd? But of course she does take every single minute of my time, and I can't dress myself for him every evening as carefully as I used to do and look after all the housekeeping arrangements. Daisy is a very poor cook and she simply throws the things on the table, but it seems to me that my first duty is to the baby, so I try to put up with the discomforts as well as I can. It is hard to eat what she cooks since everything tastes exactly alike, but I try to swallow as much as I can because the doctor says that if I don't keep up my strength I shall have to stop nursing the baby. Wouldn't that be dreadful? It almost breaks my heart to think of it, and I am sure we'd never get any artificial food to agree with her. She is perfectly well now, the sweetest, fattest thing you ever saw, and a real beauty, and she is so devoted to me that she cries whenever I go out of her sight. I am never tired of watching her, and even when she is asleep I sit sometimes for an hour by her crib just thinking how pretty she looks with her eyes closed and wishing you could see her. Oliver says I spoil her to death, but how can a baby of seven months be spoiled. He doesn't enjoy her half as much as I do, and sometimes I almost think that he gets impatient of seeing her always in my arms. At first he absolutely refused to have her crib brought into our room, but when I cried, he gave in and was very sweet about it. I feel so ashamed sometimes of the way the house looks, but there doesn't seem to be any help for it because the doctor says if I let myself get tired it will be bad for the baby. Of course I wouldn't put my own health before his comfort, but I am obliged to think first of the baby, am I not? Last night, for instance, the poor little thing was ill with colic and I was up and down with her until daybreak. Then this morning she woke early and I had to nurse her and give her her bath, and, added to everything else, Daisy's cousin died and she sent word she couldn't come. I slipped on a wrapper before taking a bath or fixing my hair and ran down to try and get Oliver's breakfast, but the baby began to cry and he came after me and said he wanted to make the coffee himself. Then he brought a cup upstairs to me, but I was so tired and nervous that I couldn't drink it. He didn't seem to understand why, feeling as badly as I did, I wouldn't just put the baby back into her crib and make her stay there until I got some rest, but the little thing was so wide awake that I hadn't the heart to do it. Besides, it is so important to keep regular hours with her, isn't it? I don't suppose a man ever realizes how a woman looks at these things, but you will understand, won't you, mother?
I am all alone in the house to-night because a play is in town that Oliver wanted to see and I made him go to it. He wanted to ask Mrs. Midden to sit downstairs (she has offered over and over again to do it) so that I might go too, but of course I wouldn't let him. I really couldn't have enjoyed it a minute for thinking of the baby, and besides I never cared for the theatre. Then, too, he doesn't know (for I never tell him) how very tired I am by the time night comes. Sometimes when Oliver comes home and we sit in the dining-room (we never use the drawing-room, because it is across the hall and I'm afraid I shouldn't hear the baby cry) it is as much as I can do to keep my eyes open. I try not to let him notice it, but one night when he read me the first act of a play he is writing, I went to sleep, and though he didn't say anything, I could see that he was very much hurt. He worries a good deal about my health, too, and he even went out one day and engaged a nurse without saying anything to me about it. After I had talked to her though, I saw that she would never do, so I sent her away before he came home. I wish I could get really strong and feel well again, but the doctor insists I never will until I get out of doors and use my muscles. But you stay in the house all the time and so did grandmother, so I don't believe there's a word of truth in what he says. Anyway, I go out every day now with the baby.
Thank you so much for the little bands. They are just what I wanted.
With dearest love,Your devotedVirginia.
Matoaca City.June 10, 1886.
Matoaca City.June 10, 1886.
Dearest Mother:
Daisy left a week ago and we couldn't find another servant until to-day. I must say that I prefer coloured servants. They are so much more dependable. I didn't know until the evening before Daisy left that she was going, and I had to send Oliver straight out to see if he could find somebody to come in and help me. There wasn't a soul to be had until to-day, however, so for a week I was obliged to make Oliver get his dinner at the boarding-house. It doesn't make any difference what I have because I haven't a particle of appetite, and I'd just as soon eat tea and toast as anything else. Of course, but for the baby I could have managed perfectly well—but she has been so fretful of late that she doesn't let me put her down a minute. The doctor says her teeth are beginning to hurt her, and that I must expect to have trouble the first summer. She has been so well until now that he thinks it has been really remarkable. He tells me he never knew a healthier baby, but of course I am terribly anxious about her teething in the hot weather. If she grows much more fretful I'm afraid I shall have to take her to the country for July and August. It seems dreadful to leave Oliver all alone, but I don't see how I can help it if the doctor advises me to go. Oliver has gone to some musical comedy at the Academy to-night, and I am so tired that I am going to bed just as soon as I finish this letter. I hope and pray that the baby will have a quiet night. Don't you think that Daisy treated me very badly considering how kind I had been to her? Only a week ago when she was taken with pain in the night, I got up and made her a mustard plaster and sat by her bed until she felt easier. The next day I did all of her work, and yet she has so little gratitude that she could leave me this way when she knows perfectly well that I am worried to death about the baby's first summer. I'd give anything if I could go home in July as you suggest, but it is such a long trip, and the heat will probably be quite as bad in Dinwiddie as here. Of course, it would make all the difference in the world to me to be where I could have you to advise me about the baby, and I'd go to-morrow if it only wasn't so far. Mrs. Midden has told me of a boarding-house in the country not more than twenty miles from here where Oliver could come down every evening, and we may decide to go there for a month or two. I can't help feeling very anxious, especially as Mrs. Scott's little boy—he is just the age of baby—was taken ill the other night, and they thought he would die before they could get a doctor.
This letter is full of my worries, but in spite of them I am the happiest woman that ever lived. Oliver is the best thing to me you can imagine, and the baby is so fascinating that I enjoy every minute I am with her. It is the greatest fun to watch her in her bath. I know you would simply go into raptures over her—and she is so bright that she already understands every word that I say. She grows more like Oliver all the time, and the other day while I was watching her playing with her rubber doll, she looked so beautiful that it almost frightened me.
I am so glad dear father is well, and what you wrote me about John Henry's admiration for Susan interested me so much that I sat straight down and wrote to him. Why do you think that it is only friendship and that he isn't in love with her? If he really thinks her the "finest girl in the world," I should imagine he was beginning to be pretty serious. I am delighted to hear that he is going to take her to the festival. Tell Susan from me that I shall never be satisfied until she is as happy as I am. Mr. Treadwell was right, I believe, not to let her go to college, though of course I want dear Susan to have whatever she sets her heart on. But, when all is said, you were wise in teaching me that nothing matters to a woman except love. More and more I am learning that if we only love unselfishly enough, everything else will work out for good to us. My little worries can't keep me from being so blissfully happy that I want to sing all the time. Work is a joy to me because I feel that I am doing it for Oliver and the baby. And with two such treasures to live for I should be the most ungrateful creature alive if I ever complained.
Your ever loving daughter,Virginia.
Matoaca City, July 1, 1886.
Matoaca City, July 1, 1886.
Dearest Mother:
We are leaving suddenly for the country, and I'll send our address just as soon as we get there. The doctor thinks I ought to take the baby away from town, so I am going to the boarding-house I wrote you about. Oliver will come down every evening—it's only an hour's trip.
I am so tired from packing that I can't write any more.
Lovingly,Virginia.
Matoaca City. September 15, 1886.
Matoaca City. September 15, 1886.
Dearest Mother:
Here we are back again in our home, and I was never so thankful in my life to get away from any place. I wrote you how dreadfully inconvenient it was, but it would take pages to tell you all of my experiences in the last few days. Such people you never saw in your life! And the food got so uneatable that I lived on crackers for the last fortnight. Fortunately, I was still nursing the baby, but the doctor has just told me that I must stop. I am so distressed about it. Do you think it will go hard with her after the first year? She is as fat and well as she can be now, but I live in hourly terror of her getting sick. If anything should happen to her, I believe it would kill me.
Oliver sends love. He is working very hard at the office now, and he hates it.
Your lovingVirginia.
I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Midden has found me such a nice servant. She is a very young coloured girl, but looks so kind and capable, and says she is perfectly devoted to children. Her name is Marthy, and I feel that she's going to be a great comfort to me.
Matoaca City.October 12, 1886.
Matoaca City.October 12, 1886.
My Darling Mother:
I was overjoyed to find your letter in the hall when I came out from breakfast. Has it really been two weeks since I wrote to you? That seems dreadful, but the days go by so fast that I hardly realize how long it is between my letters.
We are all well, and Marthy has become the greatest help to me. Of course, I don't let her do anything for the baby, but she is so careful and trustworthy that I am going to try having her take out the carriage in the morning. At first I shan't let her go off the block, so that I can have my eye on her all the time. Little Lucy took a fancy to her at once, and really enjoys playing with her. This makes it possible for me to do a little sewing, and I am working hard trying to make over one or two of my dresses. Oliver wants me to have a dressmaker do it, but we have so many extra expenses all the time that I don't feel we can afford to put out any sewing. We have spent a great deal on doctors since we were married, but of course with a young child we can't very well expect anything else.
And now, dearest mother, I have something to tell you, which no one knows—not even Oliver—except Doctor Marshall and myself. We are going to have another darling baby in March, if everything goes as it ought to. I have kept it a secret because Oliver has had a good many business worries, and I knew it would make him miserable. It never seems to have entered his head that it might happen again so soon, and for his sake I do wish we could have waited until we got a little more money in the bank, but I suppose I oughtn't to say this because God would certainly not send children into the world unless it was right for them to be born. I try to remember what dear grandmamma said when somebody condoled with her at the time she was expecting her tenth child—that she hoped she was too good a Christian to dictate to the Lord as to how many souls He should send into the world. As for me, I should be perfectly delighted—it will be so much better for baby to have a little brother or sister to play with when she gets bigger—but I can't help worrying about Oliver's peculiar attitude of mind. I am sure that father wouldn't have felt that way, and think how poor he has always been. Perhaps it comes from dear Oliver having lived abroad so much and away from the Christian influences, which have been one of the greatest blessings of my life. I have put off telling him every day just because I dread to think of the blow it will be to him. He is the dearest and best husband that ever lived, and I worship the ground he walks on, but, do you know, things are always a surprise to him when they happen? He never looks ahead a single minute. I am sometimes afraid that he isn't the least bit practical, and it makes him impatient when I talk to him about trying to cut down expenses. Of course, I have to save as much as I can and I count every single penny, or we'd never have enough money to get through the month. I never buy a stitch for either the baby or myself, though Oliver complains now and then that I don't dress as well as I used to do. But how can I when I've worn the same things ever since my marriage, besides making the baby's clothes out of my old ones? You can understand from this how grateful I am for the check you sent—but, dearest mother, I know that you oughtn't to have done it, and that you sacrificed your own comfort and father's to give it to me.
I wish Oliver could get something to do in Dinwiddie. He will never be happy here, and we could live on so much less money at home—in a little house near the rectory.
Your loving child,Virginia.
On a February morning five years later, Mrs. Pendleton, who was returning from her daily trip to the market, met Susan Treadwell at the corner of Old Street.
"You are coming up to welcome Jinny, aren't you, Susan?" she asked. "The train gets in at four o'clock."
"Why, of course. I couldn't sleep a wink until I'd seen her. It has been seven years, and it seems a perfect eternity."
"She hasn't changed much—at least she hadn't six months ago when I was out there at the birth of her last baby. The little thing lived only two hours, you know, and I thought at first his death would kill her."
"It was a great blow—but she has been fortunate never to have had a day's sickness with the other three. I am dying to see them—especially the eldest. That's your namesake, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's Lucy. She's six years old now, and as good as an angel, but she hasn't fulfilled her promise of beauty. Virginia says she was the prettiest baby she ever saw."
"Everybody says that Jenny, the youngest, is a perfect beauty."
"That's why her father makes so much of her, I reckon. I told him when I was out there that he oughtn't to show such a difference between them. Do you know, Susan, I wouldn't say it to anybody else, but I don't believe Oliver has a real fondness for children. He gets tired of having them always about, and that makes him impatient. Now, Virginia is a born mother, just like her grandmother and all the women of our family."
"I should think Oliver would be crazy about the boy. He was named after his father, too."
"Virginia felt she ought to name him Henry, but we call him Harry. No, Oliver hardly ever takes any notice of him. I don't mean, of course, that he isn't nice and kind to them—but he isn't wrapped up in them heart and soul as Virginia is. I really believe he is more absorbed in this play he has written than he is in the children."
"I am so glad to hear that two of his plays are going to be staged. That's splendid, isn't it?"
"He is coming back to Dinwiddie because of it. Now that he is assured of recognition, he says he is going to devote all his time to writing. Poor fellow, he did so hate the work out at Matoaca City, though I must say he was very faithful and persevering about it."
"You've taken that little house in Prince Street for them, where old Miss Franklin used to live, haven't you? The last time I saw you, you hadn't quite decided about it."
"I couldn't resist it because it is only three squares from the rectory. Mr. Pendleton set his heart on it from the first minute."
"Well, I'm so glad," said Susan, shifting the small basket of fruit she carried from one arm to the other, "and I'll certainly run in and see them this evening—I suppose they'll be at the rectory for supper?"
"Why, no. Jinny said she couldn't bear to be away from the children the first night, so we are all going there. I shall send Docia over to cook supper before they get here, and I've just been to market to see if I could find anything that Oliver would particularly like. He used to be so fond of sweetbreads."
"Mr. Dewlap has some very nice ones. I got one for mother. She hasn't been well for the last few days."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Give her my love and tell her I'll come down just as soon as I get Jinny settled. I've been so taken up getting the house ready that I haven't thought of another thing for three weeks."
"When will Oliver's play be put on in New York?" asked Susan, turning back after they had parted.
"In three weeks. He is going back again for the last rehearsals. I wish Jinny could go with him, but I don't believe she would spend a night away from the children for anything on earth."
"Isn't it beautiful that her marriage has turned out so well?"
"Yes, I don't believe she could be any happier if she tried, and I must say that Oliver makes a much better husband than I ever thought he would. I never heard them disagree the whole time I was there. Of course, Jinny gives up to him in everything except where the children are concerned, but, then, a woman always expects to do that. One thing I'm certain of—he couldn't have found a better wife if he'd searched the world over. She never thinks of herself a minute, and you know how fond she used to be of pretty clothes and of fixing herself up. Now, she simply lives in Oliver and the children, and she is the proudest thing of his plays! The rector says that she thinks he is Shakespeare and Milton rolled into one."
"Nothing could be nicer," said Susan, "and it is all such a happy surprise to me. Of course, I always thought Oliver very attractive—everybody does—but he seemed to me to be selfish and undisciplined, and I wasn't at all sure that Jinny was the kind of woman to bring out the best in him."
"You'll think so when you see them together."
Then they smiled and parted, Mrs. Pendleton hurrying back to the little house, while Susan turned down Old Street, in the direction of her home. She walked rapidly, with an easy swinging pace seldom seen in the women of Dinwiddie, and not heartily approved by the men. At twenty-seven she was far handsomer than she had been at twenty, for her figure had grown more shapely and her face had lost the look of intense preoccupation which had once marred its charm. Strong, capable, conquering, she still appeared; but in some subtle way she had grown softer. Mrs. Pendleton would probably have said that she had "settled."
At the first corner she met John Henry on his way to the bank, and turning, he walked with her to the end of the block, where they stood a moment discussing Virginia's return.
"I've just been to attend to some bills," he explained; "that's why I'm out at this hour. You never come into the bank now, I notice."
"Not often. Are you going to see Jinny this evening?"
"If you'll let me bring you home. I can't imagine Virginia with three children, can you? I'm half afraid to see her again."
"You mean you think she may have changed? Mrs. Pendleton says not."
"Oh, that's Aunt Lucy all over. If Virginia had got as fat as Miss Priscilla, she'd still believe she hadn't altered a particle."
"Well, she isn't fat, anyway. She weighs less than she ever did."
Her serious eyes dwelt on him under the green sunshade she held, and it is possible that she wondered vaguely what it was about John Henry that had made her love him unsought ever since she could remember. He was certainly not handsome—though he was less stout and much better looking than he used to be: he was not particularly clever, even if he was successful with the work Cyrus had given him. She was under no delusion concerning him (being a remarkably clear-sighted young person), yet she knew that taking him just as he was, large, slow, kind, good, he aroused in her a tenderness that was almost ridiculous. She had waited patiently seven years for him to discover that he cared for her—a fact which had been perfectly evident to her long before his duller wit had perceived it.
"Do you want to be there to welcome Jinny?" he asked.
"I'd thought I'd go up about five, so I could get a glimpse of the children before they are put to bed."
"Then I'll meet you there and bring you home. I wouldn't take anything for meeting you, Susan. There's something about you that always cheers me."
She met his eyes frankly. "Well, I'm glad of that," she replied in her confident way, and held out her hand through the handle of the basket. An instant later, when she passed on into Bolingbroke Street, there was a smile on her face which made it almost pretty.
The front door was open, and as she entered the house her mother came groping toward her out of the close-smelling dusk of the hall.
"I thought you'd never get back, Susan. I've had such a funny feeling."
"What kind of feeling, mother? It must be just nervousness. Here are some beautiful grapes I've brought you."
"I wish you wouldn't leave me alone. I don't like to be left alone."
"Well, I don't leave you any more than I'm obliged to, but if I stay shut up here I feel as if I'd smother. I've asked Miss Willy to come and sit with you this evening while I run up to welcome Virginia."
"Is she coming back? Nobody told me. Nobody tells me anything."
"But I did tell you. Why, we've been talking about it for weeks. You must have forgotten."
"I shouldn't have forgotten it. I'm sure I shouldn't have forgotten it if you had told me. But you keep everything from me. You are just like your father. You and James are both just like your father." Her voice had grown peevish, and an expression of fury distorted her usually passive features.
"Why, mother, what in the world is the matter?" asked Susan, startled by her manner. "Come upstairs and lie down. I don't believe you are well. You didn't eat a morsel of breakfast, so I'm going to fix you a nice little lunch. I got you a beautiful sweetbread from Mr. Dewlap."
Putting her arm about her, she led her up the long flight of steps to her room, where Mrs. Treadwell, pacified by the attention, began immediately to doze on the chintz-covered couch by the window.
"I don't see what on earth ever made me marry your father, Susan," she said, starting up half an hour later, when her daughter appeared with the tray. "Everybody knew the Treadwells couldn't hold a candle to my family."
"I wouldn't worry about that now, mother," replied Susan briskly, while she placed the tray on a little table at the head of the couch. "Sit up and eat these oysters."
"I'm obliged to worry over it," returned Mrs. Treadwell irritably, while she watched her daughter arrange her plate and pour out the green tea from the little Rebecca-at-the-well teapot. "I don't see what got into my head and made me do it. Why, his branch of the Treadwells had petered out until they were as common as dirt."
"Well, it's too late to mend matters, so we'd better turn in and try to make the best of them." She held out an oyster on the end of a fork, and her mother received and ate it obediently.
"If I could only once understand why I did it, I think I could rest easier, Susan."
"Perhaps you were in love with each other. I've heard of such a thing."
"Well, if I was going to fall in love, I reckon I could have found somebody better to fall in love with," retorted Mrs. Treadwell with the same strange excitement in her manner. Then she took up her knife and fork and began to eat her luncheon with relish.
At five o'clock that afternoon, when Susan reached the house in Prince Street, Virginia, with her youngest child in her arms, was just stepping out of a dilapidated "hack," from which a grinning negro driver handed a collection of lunch baskets into the eager hands of the rector and Mrs. Pendleton, who stood on the pavement.
"Here's Susan!" called Mrs. Pendleton in her cheerful voice, rather as if she feared her daughter would overlook her friend in the excitement of homecoming.
"Oh, you darling Susan!" exclaimed Virginia, kissing her over the head of a sleeping child in her arms. "This is Jenny—poor little thing, she hasn't been able to keep her eyes open. Don't you think she is the living image of our Saint Memin portrait of great-grandmamma?"
"She's a cherub," said Susan. "Let me look at you first, Jinny. I want to see if you've changed."
"Well, you can't expect me to look exactly as I did before I had four babies!" returned Virginia with a happy laugh. She was thinner, and there were dark circles of fatigue from the long journey under her eyes, but the Madonna-like possibilities in her face were fulfilled, and it seemed to Susan that she was, if anything, lovelier than before. The loss of her girlish bloom was forgotten in the expression of love and goodness which irradiated her features. She wore a black cloth skirt, and a blouse of some ugly blue figured silk finished at the neck with the lace scarf Susan had sent her at Christmas. Her hat was a characterless black straw trimmed with a bunch of yellow daisies; and by its shape alone, Susan discerned that Virginia had ceased to consider whether or not her clothes were becoming. But she shone with an air of calm and radiant happiness in which all trivial details were transfigured as by a flood of light.
"This is Lucy. She is six years old, and to think that she has never seen her dear Aunt Susan," said Virginia, while she pulled forward the little girl who was shyly clinging to her skirt. "And the other is Harry. Marthy, bring Harry here and let him speak to Miss Susan. He is nearly four, and so big for his age. Where is Harry, Marthy?"
"He's gone into the yard, ma'am, I couldn't keep him back," said Marthy. "As soon as he caught sight of that pile of bricks he wanted to begin building."
"Well, we'll go, too," replied Virginia. "That child is simply crazy about building. Has Oliver paid the driver, mother? And what has become of him? Susan, have you spoken to Oliver?"
No, Susan hadn't, but as they turned, he appeared on the porch and came eagerly forward. Her first impression was that he had grown handsomer than she had ever believed possible; and the next minute she asked herself how in the world he had managed to exercise his vitality in Matoaca City. He was one of those men, she saw, in whom the spirit of youth burned like a flame. Every year would pass as a blessing, not as a curse, to him, and already, because of her intenser emotions and her narrower interests, Virginia was beginning to look older than he. There was a difference, too, in their dress, for he had the carefully groomed and well-brushed appearance so rare in Dinwiddie, while Virginia's clothes might have been worn, with equal propriety, by Miss Priscilla Batte. She was still lovely, but it was a loveliness, Susan felt with a pang, that would break early.
"Why, there's Susan!" exclaimed Oliver, coming toward her with an eager pleasure in his face which made it more boyish than ever. "Well, well, it's good to see you, Susan. Are you the same old dear I left behind me?"
"The same," said Susan laughing. "And so glad about your plays, Oliver, so perfectly delighted."
"By Jove, you're the first person to speak of them," he replied. "Nobody else seems to think a play is worth mentioning as long as a baby is in sight. That's a delusion of Virginia's, too. I wish you'd convince her, Susan, that a man is of some use except as a husband and a father."
"But they are such nice babies, Oliver."
"Oh, nice enough as babies go. The boy's a trump. He'd be a man already if his mother would let him. But babies ought to have their season like everything else under the sun. For God's sake, Susan, talk to me about something else!" he added in mock despair.
Virginia was already in the house, and when Oliver and Susan joined her, they found Mrs. Pendleton trying to persuade her to let Marthy carry the sleeping Jenny up to the nursery.
"Give me that child, Jinny," said Oliver, a trifle sharply. "You know the doctor told you not to carry her upstairs."
"But I'm sure it won't hurt me," she responded, with an angelic sweetness of voice. "It will wake her to be changed, and the poor little thing has had such a trying day."
"Well, you aren't going to carry her, if she wakes twenty times," retorted Oliver. "Here, Marthy, if she thinks I'd drop her, suppose you try it."
"Why, bless you, sir, I can take her so she won't know it," returned Marthy reassuringly, and coming forward, she proved her ability by sliding the unconscious child from Virginia's arms into her own.
"Where is Harry?" asked Mrs. Pendleton anxiously. "Nobody has seen Harry since we got here."
"I is, ma'am," replied the cheerful Marthy over her shoulder, as she toiled up the stairs, with Virginia and little Lucy noiselessly following. "I've undressed him and I was obliged to hide his clothes to keep him from putting 'em on again. He's near daft with excitement."
"Perhaps I'd better go up and help get them to bed," said Mrs. Pendleton, turning from the rector to Oliver. "I'm afraid Jinny will be too tired to enjoy her supper. Harry is in such a gale of spirits I can hear him talking."
"You might as well, my dear," rejoined the rector mildly, as he stooped over to replace one of the baby's bottles in the basket from which it had slipped. "Don't you think we might get some of these things out of the way?" he added. "If you take that alcohol stove, Oliver, I'll follow with these caps and shawls."
"Certainly, sir," rejoined Oliver readily. He always addressed the rector as "sir," partly because it seemed to him to be appropriate, partly because he knew that the older man expected him to do so. It was one of Oliver's most engaging characteristics that he usually adapted himself with perfect ease to whatever life or other people expected of him.
While they were carrying the baskets into the passage at the back of the dining-room, Mrs. Pendleton, whose nervous longing had got at last beyond her control, deserted Susan, with an apology, and flitted up the stairs.
"Come up and tell Jinny good-night before you go, dear," she added; "I'm afraid she will not get down again to see you."
"Oh, don't worry about me," replied Susan. "I want to say a few words to Oliver, and then I'm coming up to see Harry. Harry appears to me to be a man of personality."
"He's a darling child," replied Mrs. Pendleton, a little vaguely, "and Jinny says she never saw him so headstrong before. He is usually as good as gold."
"Well, well, it's a fine family," said the rector, beaming upon his son-in-law, when they returned from the passage. "I never saw three healthier children. It's a pity you lost the other one," he added in a graver tone, "but as he lived such a short time, Virginia couldn't take it so much to heart as if he had been older. She seems to have got over the disappointment."
"Yes, I think she's got over it," said Oliver.
"It will be good for her to be back in Dinwiddie. I never felt satisfied to think of her so far away."
"Yes, I'm glad we could come back," agreed Oliver pleasantly, though he appeared to Susan's quick eye to be making an effort.
"By the way, I haven't spoken of your literary work," remarked the rector, with the manner of a man who is saying something very agreeable. "I have never been to the theatre, but I understand that it is losing a great deal of its ill odour. I always remember when anything is said about the stage that, after all, Shakespeare was an actor. We may be old-fashioned in Dinwiddie," he pursued in the complacent tone in which the admission of this failing is invariably made, "but I don't think we can have any objection to sweet, clean plays, with an elevating moral tone to them. They are no worse, anyway, than novels."
Though Oliver kept his face under such admirable control, Susan, glancing at him quickly, saw a shade of expression, too fine for amusement, too cordial for resentment, pass over his features. His colour, which was always high, deepened, and raising his head, he brushed the smooth dark hair back from his forehead. Through some intuitive strain of sympathy, Susan understood, while she watched him, that his plays were as vital a matter in his life as the children were in Virginia's.
"I must run up and see Harry before he goes to sleep," she said, feeling instinctively that the conversation was becoming a strain.
At the allusion to his grandson, the rector's face lost immediately its expression of forced pleasantness and relapsed into its look of genial charm.
"You ought to be proud of that boy, Oliver," he observed, beaming. "There's the making of a fine man in him, but you mustn't let Jinny spoil him. It took all my strength and authority to keep Lucy from ruining Jinny, and I've always said that my brother-in-law Tom Bland would have been a first-rate fellow if it hadn't been for the way his mother raised him. God knows, I like a woman to be wrapped up heart and soul in her household—and I don't suppose anybody ever accused the true Southern lady of lacking in domesticity—but if they have a failing, which I refuse to admit, it is that they are almost too soft-hearted where their children—especially their sons—are concerned."
"I used to tell Virginia that she gave in to Harry too much when he was a baby," said Oliver, who was evidently not without convictions regarding the rearing of his offspring; "but she hasn't been nearly so bad about it since Jenny came. Jenny is the one I'm anxious about now. She is a headstrong little beggar and she has learned already how to get around her mother when she wants anything. It's been worse, too," he added, "since we lost the last poor little chap. Ever since then Virginia has been in mortal terror for fear something would happen to the others."
"It was hard on her," said the rector. "We men can't understand how women feel about a thing like that, though," he added gently. "I remember when we lost our babies—you know we had three before Virginia came, but none of them lived more than a few hours—that I thought Lucy would die of grief and disappointment. You see they have all the burden and the anxiety of it, and I sometimes think that a child begins to live for a woman a long time before a man ever thinks of it as a human being."
"I suppose you're right," returned Oliver in the softened tone which proved to Susan that he was emotionally stirred. "I tried to be as sympathetic with Virginia as I could, but—do you know?—I stopped to ask myself sometimes if I could really understand. It seemed to her so strange that I wasn't knocked all to pieces by the thing—that I could go on writing as if nothing had happened."
"I am not sure that it isn't beyond the imagination of a man to enter into a woman's most sacred feeling," remarked the rector, with a touch of the sentimentality in which he religiously shrouded the feminine sex. So ineradicable, indeed, was his belief in the inherent virtue of every woman, that he had several times fallen a helpless victim in the financial traps of conscienceless Delilahs. But since his innocence was as temperamental a quality as was Virginia's maternal passion, experience had taught him nothing, and the fact that he had been deceived in the past threw no shadow of safeguard around his steps in the present. This endearing trait, which made him so successful as a husband, was probably the cause of his unmitigated failure as a reformer. In looking at a woman, it was impossible for him to see anything except perfection.
When Susan reached the top of the staircase, Mrs. Pendleton called to her, through the half open door of the nursery, to come in and hear how beautifully Lucy was saying her prayers. Her voice was full of a suppressed excitement; there was a soft pink flush in her cheeks; and it seemed to Susan that the presence of her grandchildren had made her almost a girl again. She sat on the edge of a trundle-bed slipping a nightgown over the plump shoulders of little Lucy, who held herself very still and prim, for she was a serious child, with a natural taste for propriety. Her small plain face, with its prominent features and pale blue eyes, had a look of intense earnestness and concentration, as though the business of getting to bed absorbed all her energies; and the only movement she made was to toss back the slender and very tight braid of brown hair from her shoulders. She said her prayer as if it were the multiplication table, and having finished, slid gently into bed, and held up her face to be kissed.
"Jenny wouldn't drink but half of her bottle, Miss Virginia," said Marthy, appearing suddenly on the threshold of Virginia's bedroom, for the youngest child slept in the room with her mother. "She dropped off to sleep so sound that I couldn't wake her."
"I hope she isn't sick, Marthy," responded Virginia in an anxious tone. "Did she seem at all feverish?"
"Naw'm, she ain't feverish, she's jest sleepy headed."
"Well, I'll come and look at her as soon as I can persuade Harry to finish his prayers. He stopped in the middle of them, and he refuses to bless anybody but himself."
She spoke gravely, gazing with her exhaustless patience over the impish yellow head of Harry, who knelt, in his little nightgown, on the rug at her feet. His roving blue eyes met Susan's as she came over to him, while his chubby face broke into a delicious smile.
"Don't notice him, Susan," said Virginia, in her lovely voice which was as full of tenderness and as lacking in humour as her mother's. "Harry, you shan't speak to Aunt Susan until you've been good and finished your prayers."
"Don't want to speak to Aunt Susan," retorted the monster of infant depravity, slipping his bare toes through a rent in the rug, and doubling up with delight at his insubordination.
"I never knew him to behave like this before," said Virginia, almost in tears from shame and weariness. "It must be the excitement of getting here. He is usually so good. Now, Harry, begin all over again. 'God bless dear papa, God bless dear mamma, God bless dear grandmamma, God bless dear grandpapa, God bless dear Lucy, God bless dear Jenny, God bless all our dear friends.'"
"God bless dear Harry," recited the monster.
"He has gone on like that ever since I started," said poor Virginia. "I don't know what to do about it. It seems dreadful to let him go to bed without saying his prayers properly. Now, Harry, please, please be good; poor mother is so tired, and she wants to go and kiss little Jenny good-night. 'God bless dear papa,' and I'll let you get in bed."
"God bless Harry," was the imperturbable rejoinder to this pleading.
"Don't you want your poor mother to have some supper, Harry?" inquired Susan severely.
"Harry wants supper," answered the innocent.
"I suppose I'll have to let him go," said Virginia, distractedly, "but Oliver will be horrified. He says I don't reason with them enough. Harry," she concluded sternly, "don't you understand that it is naughty of you to behave this way and keep mamma away from poor little Jenny?"
"Bad Jenny," said Harry.
"If you don't say your prayers this minute, you shan't have any preserves on your bread to-morrow."
"Bad preserves," retorted Harry.
"Well, if he won't, I don't see how I can make him," said Virginia. "Come, then, get into bed, Harry, and go to sleep. You have been a bad boy and hurt poor mamma's feelings so that she is going to cry. She won't be able to eat her supper for thinking of the way you have disobeyed her."
Jumping into bed with a bound, Harry dug his head into the pillows, gurgled, and then sat up very straight.
"God bless dear papa, God bless dear mamma, God bless dear grandmamma, God bless dear grandpapa, God bless dear Lucy, God bless dear Jenny, God bless our dear friends everywhere," he repeated in a resounding voice.
"Oh, you precious lamb!" exclaimed Virginia. "He couldn't bear to hurt poor mamma, could he?" and she kissed him ecstatically before hastening to the slumbering Jenny in the adjoining room.
"I like the little scamp," said Susan, when she reported the scene to John Henry on the way home, "but he manages his mother perfectly. Already his sense of humour is better developed than hers."
"I can't get over seeing Virginia with children," observed John Henry, as if the fact of Virginia's motherhood had just become evident to him. "It suits her, though. She looked happier than I ever saw her—and so, for that matter, did Aunt Lucy."
"It made me wonder how Mrs. Pendleton had lived away from them for seven years. Why, you can't imagine what she is—she doesn't seem to have any life at all until you see her with Virginia's children."
"It's a wonderful thing," said John Henry slowly, "and it taught me a lot just to look at them. I don't know why, but it seemed to make me understand how much I care about you, Susan."
"Hadn't you suspected it before?" asked Susan as calmly as he had spoken. Emotionalism, she knew, she would never find in John Henry's wooing, and, though she could not have explained the reason of it to herself, she liked the brusque directness of his courtship. It was part of that large sincerity of nature which had first attracted her to him.
"Of course, in a way I knew I cared more for you than for anybody else—but I didn't realize that you were more to me than Virginia had ever been. I had got so in the habit of thinking I was in love with her that it came almost as a surprise to me to find that it was over."
"I knew it long ago," said Susan.
"Why didn't you make me see it?"
"Oh, I waited for you to find it out yourself. I was sure that you would some day."
"Do you think you could ever care for me, Susan?"
A smile quivered on Susan's lips as she looked up at him, but with the reticence which had always characterized her, she answered simply:
"I think I could, John Henry."
His hand reached down and closed over hers, and in the long look which they exchanged under the flickering street lamp, she felt suddenly that perfect security which is usually the growth of happy years. Whatever the future brought to them, she knew that she could trust John Henry's love for her.
"And we've lost seven years, dearest," he said, with a catch in his voice. "We've lost seven years just because I happened to be born a fool."
"But we've got fifty ahead of us," she replied with a joyous laugh.
As she spoke, her heart cried out, "Fifty years of the thing I want!" and she looked up into the kind, serious face of John Henry as if it were the face of incarnate happiness. A tremendous belief in life surged from her brain through her body, which felt incredibly warm and young. She thought exultantly of herself as of one who did not accept destiny, but commanded it.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, but he held her hand pressed closely against his heart, and once or twice he turned in the deserted street and looked into her eyes as if he found there all the words that he needed.
"We won't waste any more time, will we, Susan?" he asked when they reached the house. "Let's be married in December."
"If mother is better by then. She hasn't been well, and I am anxious about her."
"We'll go to housekeeping at once. I'll begin looking about to-morrow. God bless you, darling, for what you are giving me."
She caressed his hand gently with her fingers, and he was about to speak again, when the door behind them opened and the head of Cyrus appeared like that of a desolate bird of prey.
"Is that you, Susan?" he inquired. "Where have you been all this time? Your mother was taken ill more than an hour ago, and the doctor says that she has been paralyzed."
Breaking away from John Henry, Susan ran up the steps and past her father into the hall, where Miss Willy stood weeping.
"I was all by myself with her. There wasn't another living soul in the house," sobbed the little dressmaker. "She fell over just like that, with her face all twisted, while I was talking to her."
"Oh, poor mother, poor mother!" cried the girl as she ran upstairs. "Is she in her room, and who is with her?"
"The doctor has been there for over an hour, and he says that she'll never be able to move again. Oh, Susan, how will she stand it?"
But Susan had already outstripped her, and was entering the sick-room, where Mrs. Treadwell lay unconscious, with her distorted face turned toward the door, as though she were watching expectantly for some one who would never come. As the girl fell on her knees beside the couch, her happiness seemed to dissolve like mist before the grim facts of mortal anguish and death. It was not until dawn, when the night's watch was over and she stood alone beside her window, that she said to herself with all the courage she could summon:
"And it's over for me, too. Everything is over for me, too. Oh, poor, poor mother!"
Love, which had seemed to her last night the supreme spirit in the universe, had surrendered its authority to the diviner image of Duty.
"Poor Aunt Belinda was paralyzed last night, Oliver," said Virginia the next morning at breakfast. "Miss Willy Whitlow just brought me a message from Susan. She spent the night there and was on her way this morning to ask mother to go."
Oliver had come downstairs in one of his absent-minded moods, but by the time Virginia had repeated her news he was able to take it in, and to show a proper solicitude for his aunt.
"Are you going there?" he asked. "I am obliged to do a little work on my play while I have the idea, but tell Susan I'll come immediately after dinner."
"I'll stop to inquire on my way back from market, but I won't be able to stay, because I've got all my unpacking to do. Can you take the children out this afternoon so Marthy can help me?"
"I'm sorry, but I simply can't. I've got to get on with this idea while I have control of it, and if I go out with the children I shan't be able to readjust my thoughts for twenty-fours hours."
"I'd like to go out with papa," said Lucy, who sat carefully drinking her cambric tea, so that she might not spill a drop on the mahogany table.
"I want to go with papa," remarked Harry obstreperously, while he began to drum with his spoon on the red tin tray which protected the table from his assaults.
"Papa can't go with you, darling, but if mamma finishes her unpacking in time, she'll come out into the park and play with you a little while. Be careful, Harry, you are spilling your milk. Let mamma take your spoon out for you."
Her coffee, which she had poured out a quarter of an hour ago, stood untasted and tepid beside her plate, but from long habit she had grown to prefer it in that condition. When the waffles were handed to her, she had absent-mindedly helped herself to one, while she watched Harry's reckless efforts to cut up his bacon, and it had grown sodden before she remembered that it ought to be buttered. She wore the black skirt and blue blouse in which she had travelled, for she had neglected to unpack her own clothes in her eagerness to get out the things that Oliver and the children might need. Her hair had been hastily coiled around her head, without so much as a glance in the mirror, but the expression of unselfish goodness in her face lent a charm even to the careless fashion in which she had put on her clothes. She was one of those women whose beauty, being essentially virginal, belongs, like the blush of the rose, to a particular season. The delicacy of her skin invited the mark of time or of anxiety, and already fine little lines were visible, in the strong light of the morning, at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Yet neither the years or her physical neglect of herself could destroy the look of almost angelic sweetness and love which illumined her features.
"Are you obliged to go to New York next week, Oliver?" she asked, dividing her attention equally between him and Harry's knife and fork. "Can't they rehearse 'The Beaten Road' just as well without you?"
"No, I want to be there. Is there any reason why I shouldn't?"
"Of course not. I was only thinking that Harry's birthday comes on Friday, and we should miss you."
"Well, I'm awfully sorry, but he'll have to grow old without me. By the way, why can't you run on with me for the first night, Virginia? Your mother can look after the babies for a couple of days, can't she?"
But the absent-minded look of young motherhood had settled again on Virginia's face, for the voice of Jenny, raised in exasperated demand, was heard from the nursery above.
"I wonder what's the matter?" she said, half rising in her chair, while she glanced nervously at the door. "She was so fretful last night, Oliver, that I'm afraid she is going to be sick. Will you keep an eye on Harry while I run up and see?"
Ten minutes later she came down again, and began, with a relieved manner, to stir her cold coffee.
"What were you saying, Oliver?" she inquired so sweetly that his irritation vanished.
"I was just asking you if you couldn't let your mother look after the youngsters for a day or two and come on with me."
"Oh, I'd give anything in the world to see it, but I couldn't possibly leave the children. I'd be so terribly anxious for fear something would happen."
"Sometimes I get in a blue funk about that play," he said seriously. "I've staked so much on it that I'll be pretty well cut up, morally and financially, if it doesn't go."
"But of course it will go, Oliver. Anybody could tell that just to read it. Didn't Mr. Martin write you that he thought it one of the strongest plays ever written in America—and I'm sure that is a great deal for a manager to say. Nobody could read a line of it without seeing that it is a work of genius."
For an instant he appeared to draw assurance from her praise; then his face clouded, and he responded doubtfully:
"But you thought just as well of 'April Winds,' and nobody would look at that."
"Well, that was perfect too, of its kind, but of course they are different."
"I never thought much of that," he said, "but I honestly believe that 'The Beaten Road' is a great play. That's my judgment, and I'll stand by it."
"Of course it's great," she returned emphatically. "No, Harry, you can't have any more syrup on your buckwheat cake. You have eaten more already than sister Lucy, and she is two years older than you are."
"Give it to the little beggar. It won't hurt him," said Oliver impatiently, as Harry began to protest.
"But he really oughtn't to have it, Oliver. Well, then, just a drop. Oh, Oliver, you've given him a great deal too much. Here, take mamma's plate and give her yours, Harry."
But Harry made no answer to her plea, because he was busily eating the syrup as fast as he could under pressure of the fear that he might lose it all if he procrastinated.
"He'll be sick before night and you'll have yourself to blame, Oliver," said Virginia reproachfully.
Ever since the babies had come she had assumed naturally that Oliver's interest in the small details of his children's clothes or health was perpetually fresh and absorbing like her own, and her habit of not seeing what she did not want to see in life had protected her from the painful discovery that he was occasionally bored. Once he had even tried to explain to her that, although he loved the children better than either his plays or the political fate of nations, there were times when the latter questions interested him considerably more; but the humour with which he inadvertently veiled his protest had turned the point of it entirely away from her comprehension. A deeper impression was made upon her by the fact that he had refused to stop reading about the last Presidential campaign long enough to come and persuade Harry to swallow a dose of medicine. She, who seldom read a newspaper, and was innocent of any desire to exert even the most indirect influence upon the elections, had waked in the night to ask herself if it could possibly be true that Oliver loved the children less passionately than she did.
"I've got to get to work now, dear," he said, rising. "I haven't had a quiet breakfast since Harry first came to the table. Don't you think Marthy might feed him upstairs again?"
"Oh, Oliver! It would break his heart. He would think that he was in disgrace."
"Well, I'm not sure that he oughtn't to be. Now, Lucy's all right. She behaves like a lady—but if you consider Harry an appetizing table companion, I don't."
"But, dearest, he's only a baby! And boys are different from girls. You can't expect them to have as good manners."
"I can't remember that I ever made a nuisance of myself."
"Your father was very strict with you. But surely you don't think it is right to make your children afraid of you?"
The genuine distress in her voice brought a laugh from him.
"Oh, well, they are your children, darling, and you may do as you please with them."
"Bad papa!" said Harry suddenly, chasing the last drop of syrup around his plate with a bit of bread crumb.
"Oh, no, precious; good papa! You must promise papa to be a little gentleman or he won't let you breakfast with him any more."
It was Virginia's proud boast that Harry's smile would melt even his great-uncle, Cyrus, and she watched him with breathless rapture as he turned now in his high chair and tested the effect of this magic charm on his father. His baby mouth broadened deliciously, showing two rows of small irregular teeth; his blue eyes shone until they seemed full of sparkles; his roguish, irresistible face became an incarnation of infant entreaty.
"I want to bekfast wid papa, an' I want more 'lasses," he remarked.
"He's a fascinating little rascal, there's no doubt of that," observed Oliver, in response to Virginia's triumphant look. Then, bending over, he kissed her on the cheek, before he picked up his newspapers and went into his study at the back of the parlour.
Some hours later, at their early dinner, she reported the result of her visit to the Treadwells.
"It is too awful, Oliver. Aunt Belinda has not spoken yet, and she can't move the lower part of her body at all. The doctor says she may live for years, but he doesn't think she will ever be able to walk again. I feel so sorry for her and for poor Susan. Do you know, Susan engaged herself to John Henry last night just before her mother was paralyzed, and they were to be married in December. But now she says she will give him up."
"John Henry!" exclaimed Oliver in amazement. "Why, what in the world does she see in John Henry?"
"I don't know—one never knows what people see in each other, but she has been in love with him all her life, I believe."
"Well, it's rough on her. Is she obliged to break off with him now?"
"She says it wouldn't be fair to him not to. Her whole time must be given to nursing her mother. There's something splendid about Susan, Oliver. I never realized it as much as I did to-day. Whatever she does, you may be sure it will be because it is right to do it. She sees everything so clearly, and her wishes never obscure her judgment."
"It's a pity. She'd make a great mother, wouldn't she? But life doesn't seem able to get along without a sacrifice of the fittest."
In the afternoon Mrs. Pendleton came over, but the two women were so busy arranging the furniture in its proper place, and laying away Oliver's and the children's things in drawers and closets, that not until the entire house had been put in order, did they find time to sit down for a few minutes in the nursery and discuss the future of Susan.
"I believe John Henry will want to marry her and go to live at the Treadwells', if Susan will let him," remarked Mrs. Pendleton.
"How on earth could he get on with Uncle Cyrus?" Ever since her marriage Virginia had followed Oliver's habit and spoken of Cyrus as "uncle."
"Well, I don't suppose even John Henry could do that, but perhaps he thinks anything would be better than losing Susan."
"And he's right," returned Virginia loyally, while she got out her work-bag and began sorting the array of stockings that needed darning. "Do you know, mother, Oliver seems to think that I might go to New York with him."
"And leave the children, Jinny?"
"Of course I've told him that I can't, but he's asked me two or three times to let you look after them for a day or two."
"I'd love to do it, darling—but you've never spent a night away from one of them since Lucy was born, have you?"
"No, and I'd be perfectly miserable—only I can't make Oliver understand it. Of course, they'd be just as safe with you as with me, but I'd keep imagining every minute that something had happened."