The Judgment of Eve Part 5

"Time? Oh, rubbish, you should make time. It doesn't do to let things go like that. Think of the children."

"It's because I'm always thinking of them."

They rose from their poor repast. (Coffee and mutton-chops had vanished from the board, and another period of cocoa had set in.) He picked up her shawl, that had dropped again, and placed it about her shoulders, and they dragged themselves mournfully back into their sitting-room. She took up her place on the sofa. He dropped into the arm-chair, where he sat motionless, looking dully at the fire. His wife watched him with her faded, tender eyes.

"Arthur," she said, suddenly, "it's the first meeting of the Society to-night. Did you forget?" They had never admitted, to themselves or to each other, that they had given it up.

"Yes," said Arthur, peevishly, "of course I forgot. How on earth did you expect me to remember?"

"I think you ought to go, dear, sometimes. You never went all last winter."

"I know."

"Isn't it a pity not to try--a little--just to keep it up? If it's only for the children's sake."

"My dear Aggie, it's for the children's sake--and yours--that I f.a.g my brain out, as it is. When you've been as hard at it as I've been, all day, you don't feel so very like turning out again--not for that sort of intellectual game. You say you feel stupid in the afternoon. What do you suppose I feel like in the evening?"

His accents cut Aggie to the heart.

"Oh, my dear, I know. I only thought it might do you good, sometimes, to get a change--if it's only from me and my stupidity."

"If there's one thing I hate more than another," said Arthur, "it is a change."

She knew it. That had been her consolation. Arthur was not as the race of dreamers to which he once seemed to have belonged. There was in him a dumb, undying fidelity to the tried and chosen. From the first, before his apathy came on him, he had hardly ever left her to an evening by herself.

He had had neither eyes nor ears nor voice for any other woman. And though her face had become the face of another woman, and he hated changes, she knew that it had never changed for him. He loved her more than any of the six children she had borne him.

"After all," said Aggie, "do you think it really matters?"

"Do I think what matters?"

"What we've lost."

He looked suspiciously at her, his heavy brain stirred by some foreboding of uncomfortable suggestion; she had been thinking of Barbara, perhaps.

"I don't know what you mean."

He didn't. The flame in the woman's heart was not wholly dead, because he had kindled it, and it was one with her love of him. The dream they had dreamed together had lived on for her; first, as an agony, then as a regret. But the man had pa.s.sed over into the sensual darkness that is seldom pierced by pain. Of the pleasures that had once borne him, buoyant and triumphant, on the crest of the wave, none were left but such sad earthly wreckage as life flings up at the ebbing of the spiritual tide.

They had come to the dark sh.o.r.es, where, if the captain wavers, the ships of dream founder with all their freight.

A dull light was already kindling under his tired eyelids.

"I don't know what _you_ feel like," said he, "but I've had enough sitting-up for one night. Don't you think you'd better go to bed?"

She went, obediently.

VII

A year pa.s.sed. It was winter again, and the Gattys had had sickness in their house. Aggie had been ailing ever since the birth of the baby that had succeeded Emmy. And one evening the doctor had to be summoned for little Willie, who had croup. Willie, not four years old, was the last baby but three. Yes, he was only a baby himself; Aggie realized it with anguish, as she undressed him and he lay convulsed on her lap. He was only a baby; and she had left him to run about with Arty and Catty as if he were a big boy. She should have taken more care of Willie.

But the G.o.ds took care of Willie, and he was better before the doctor could arrive; and Aggie got all the credit of his cure.

Aggie couldn't believe it. She was convinced the doctor was keeping something from her, he sat so long with Arthur in the dining-room. She could hear their voices booming up the chimney as she mended the fire in the nursery overhead. It was not, she argued, as if he ever cared to talk to Arthur. n.o.body ever cared to talk to Arthur long, nor did he care to talk to anybody.

So, when the clock struck seven (the doctor's dinner-hour), and the dining-room door never opened, Aggie's anxiety became terror, and she stole down-stairs. She had meant to go boldly in, and not stand there listening; but she caught one emphatic word that arrested her, and held her there, intent, afraid of her own terror.

"Never!"

She could hear Arthur's weak voice sharpened to a falsetto, as if he, too, were terrified.

"No, never. Never any more!"

There was a note almost of judgment in the doctor's voice; but Aggie could not hear that, for the wild cry that went up in her heart. "Oh, never what? Is Willie--my Willie--never to be well any more!"

Then she listened without a scruple, justified by her motherhood. They were keeping things from her, as they had kept them before. As they had kept them when little Barbara sickened.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She listened without a scruple, justified by her motherhood"]

"And if--if--" Arthur's voice was weaker this time; it had a sort of moral powerlessness in it; but Aggie's straining ears caught the "if."

"There mustn't be any 'ifs.'"

Aggie's heart struggled in the clutches of her fright.

"That's not what I mean. I mean--is there any danger now?"

"From what I can gather so far, I should say--none."

Aggie's heart gave a great bound of recovery.

"But if," the doctor went on, "as you say--"

"I know" cried Arthur, "you needn't say it. You won't answer for the consequences?"

"I won't. For the consequences, a woman--in the weak state your wife is in--may answer herself--with her life."

Aggie was immensely relieved. So they were only talking about her all the time!

That night her husband told her that her release had come. It had been ordained that she was to rest for two years. And she was to have help.

They must have a girl.

"Arthur," she said, firmly, "I won't have a girl. They're worse than charwomen. They eat more; and we can't afford it."

"We _must_ afford it. And oh, another thing--Have you ever thought of the children's education?"