This Freedom Part 24

She had a quickness of imagery. It constantly delighted him. "Yes, that's good," she declared. "Up like a diver, Harry. Not with goggles and a helmet and all that, but shot up like a flash, all shining and glistening and triumphant with the jewel aloft. What a shout there'd be! Dear Harry! You're splendid!"

He smiled most lovingly. "As a matter of fact, I feel I ought to make a mess of it. It'll be the first big case since we've been together that, while it's been on, we haven't had talks about.

You couldn't, of course, with this so near to you. It would be significant, and proper, if I drowned in it."

She shook her head. "Absurd! Why, the thing I'm most glad about, Harry, is that all this"--she indicated with a gesture her pose, her dress, her condition--"that all this hasn't in the least upset your work. It might have. It hasn't--and when it happens, it won't, will it?"

Harry said, "I'm rather ashamed to say it hasn't, in the least.

I've thought of you, often, but I've simply put the thought away.

And when it happens, I shall think of you--terribly--going through it; and of the small thing--But we shall be in the crisis of the case and I shall have to forget you. I'll have to, Rosalie, as I have had to. The work must go on."

She agreed emphatically. "Of course it must." She then said, "Whereas mine--"

He did not attend her. The "inward" look was deep upon his face.

There was the suggestion of a grimmish smile about his mouth. One could have guessed that he was rehearsing, with satisfaction, his enormous application while the work was going on.

She gave a sound of laughter, and that aroused him. "What's the joke?"

"Why, just how this does rather illuminate the point--"

"The point...?"

"Your work and mine--a man's and a woman's."

"Yes, tell me, dear."

"Why, Harry, I do think of it sometimes. We've planned it and arranged it and settled it so nicely, these years, and you see the big thing in marriage comes along and shatters it to bits. Your work goes on precisely as if nothing at all were happening; mine has to stand by."

"Ah, but this," Harry said, and in his turn indicated her condition.

"This--this is different. We agreed, before Huggo, that if we had children it need make no difference to you, to your work, in a way.

And it hasn't, and needn't now--when it's over. But this time, this period, why, that's bound to interfere."

"But it doesn't interfere with you. It shows the difference."

"Oh, it shows the difference," he a.s.sented.

His tone was conspicuously careless, conceding the difference but attaching to it no importance at all; and with it he rose--she had instantly the impression of him as it were brushing the difference like a crumb from his lap--and announced, "I'm going to my study now for a couple of hours before dinner. I must. Our solicitor's coming in." He bent over her and kissed her lovingly. "You understand, I know."

And he went.

Yes, it showed the difference! And was not seen by him! Yes, injurious. Yes, could conceive a grudge....

There was a mirage in her face. Her face, that had been boy's and mutinous these weeks, was Mary's and was lovely in maternal love when it was turned towards the sc.r.a.p that on a morning lay against her breast; her thoughts, that had been stubborn, hard, resentful while her days approached, welled in remorse, compa.s.sion, yearning, joy, when they were past and this was come. She'd grudged him, this littlest one! Grudged his right, put her own right against it, this tiny, helpless one! When, added to these thoughts, Huggo and Doda, those lovely darlings, were permitted to see him, asleep beside her, he was so wee, so almost nothing against their st.u.r.dy limbs, and had come so unwanted--yes, unwanted, this cherishable one of all!--that she knew instantly what name he must be given.

Her Benjamin!

Lying much alone in the succeeding days, contrite, adoring; with frequent happy tears (she was left weak): with tender, thank-G.o.d, charged with meaning tears, she found a vindication of her self-reproach that immensely bound her up, forgave her, gave her comfort. She could give up her work! She could leave all and be with her darlings! Of course she could! At any time! She had grudged the right to come of this defenceless sc.r.a.p. She had set against his right her own right. Ah, dangerous! A long road lay that way!

In conflict of his coming, with her own rights she had been much engaged. Here, on the sheet beside her, and in the nursery, overhead, were other rights. Well, when they claimed.... Of course she could!

She had not thought enough about these things....

There is to be said for her that she thought not very widely nor very deeply upon them now. Her resolution that she could, when it was necessary, give up her work, scattered them. It came to her as comes to a man, beset by poverty, scheming by this way and by that to abate it, news of a legacy. He ceases, in his relief, his present schemes; he has "no need to worry now." Or came to her as comes a sail to one shipwrecked and adrift, painfully calculating out his final dregs of food and water. He ceases, at that emblem, his desperate plans to stretch his days. He's all right now.

It was like that with Rosalie.

While only she had realised her resentment of this baby's claims, and only now her contrite yielding to them; before she had conjectured deeply on all the problem thus revealed; there came to her, like way of escape to one imprisoned, like instantaneous lifting of a fog to one therein occluded, the thought, "I can give up the work."

Of course she could! At any moment; by a word; by the mere formulation of the step within her mind, she could abandon her career. Not now.

It was not necessary now. But if or when--she used that phrase, in set terms propounding her resolution to herself--if or when the call of her children, of her home, came and was paramount, she could give up everything and respond to it. Oh, happy! Oh, glad discharge of her remorse! When the children wanted her she could just--come back. Field and Company, her career, her successes--what of them? She had done well in her career, she still would do well.

Let the claim of home and children once come into the scale against the claim of those ambitions and--she would just come back!

Oh, happy!

"Come back"? Who was it had said something about that, something about "come back" for a woman, making the expression thus dimly familiar in her mind? Who? Laet.i.tia? No, Laet.i.tia was always a.s.sociated with another phrase: striking because in terms identical with accusation previously delivered against her. Well she remembered it! On the day following Harry's visit to the house to take his deserts from poor Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke, she also had gone there, following his high idea of what was right. She had been refused admittance. There had come for her as the last voice out of that house a quivering letter from Aunt Belle, seeming to quiver in the hand with the pa.s.sionate upbraiding that had indited it, and a forlorn sentence from Laet.i.tia. "I have done everything for you, everything, everything, and this is how you have rewarded me,"

had pulsed the pages of Aunt Belle; Laet.i.tia only had written:

"Oh, Rosalie! You could have had any one you liked to love you, but you took my Harry and I shall never, never have another."

Miss Salmon's cry again! Twice identically accused. Once grotesquely accused; once, on the surface, rightly accused. Both times aware how poignant and pathetic was the cry; not moved the first time, not moved the second. Recurring to her now, she knew again how broken-hearted sad it was, and knew again it ought to move, but did not. Well, not strange now. She was a long way out of those too soft compa.s.sions. No, not Laet.i.tia had made "come back" familiar to her. The phrase, as she seemed to recollect its context, was too profoundly practical for the Laet.i.tia sort; and that was why, of course, it moved her nothing. She had learnt, jostling off corners in the market place, what formerly she had only conjectured,--that there was in life no room for sentiment, it clogged; it hampered; it brought sticky unreality into that which was sharply real.

"Come back?" No, not Laet.i.tia. Who? Keggo? Yes, it was Keggo; and immediately with the name's recovery was recovered the phrase's context. This very matter! "Rosalie, a woman can't--come back."

Absurd! But, yes, how she remembered it now! "Very dangerous being a woman," Keggo had said. "Men go into dangers but they come out of them and go home to tea. That's what it is with men, Rosalie.

They can always get out. They can always come back. They never belong to a thing, heart and soul, body and mind. Rosalie, women do. That's why it is so very, very dangerous being a woman. Women can't come back. They take to a thing, anything, and go deep enough, and they're its; they never, never will get away from it; they never, never will be able to come back out of it. Rosalie, I tell you this, when a woman gives herself, forgets moderation and gives herself to anything, she is its captive for ever. She may think she can come back but she can't come back. For a woman there is no comeback. They don't issue return tickets to women. For women there is only departure; there is no return."

Poor Keggo!

Poor Keggo had of course founded her theory upon her own bitter plight. How she had given her case away when she had said, "Look at me!" It applied to her, of course, or to any woman--or man for that matter--who drank or drugged. It applied not in the least to such a case as this of her own. Keggo had tried to apply it. She had said, "You have a theory of life. You are bent upon a career in life. Suppose you ever wanted to come back?"

She had laughed and declared she never would want to come back.

Well, look how absurd all poor Keggo's idea was now being proved!

It had suddenly occurred to her that it might at some future time be required of her to come back; and all she had to do was just--to come back. No difficulty about it whatsoever! No struggle! Indeed, and fondly she touched that by her side which had called up these thoughts, she would come back joyously. Of course she would! Field and Company, ambition, that for if and when her darlings called her! Yes, wrong every way, that poor Keggo. Dangerous being a woman, she had said, and it was not dangerous. It could be, and she had proved it, a state that could be lived full in every aspect,--full in freedom, full in endeavour, full in love, full in motherhood.

Dangerous! A week ago, inimical to this advent, injurious; now, in this advent's presence, and with this resolution gladly dedicated to it, only and wholly glorious.

This one! Come after connection, come in contrition, come to call her back when she should need to be called, the little tiny one, the belovedest one, the Benjamin one--her Benji!

CHAPTER VII

Those children were brought up with every modern advantage. Wisdom is judged by the age in which it flourishes, and everything that the day accounts wise for children those children had. Their father was of considerable and always increasing means; their mother was of great and untrammelled intelligence: anything that money could provide for children, and that intelligent principles of upbringing said ought to be provided for children, those children enjoyed. When they were out of the care of m.u.f.fet, who was everything that a nurse ought to be, they pa.s.sed into the care of a resident governess, Miss Prescott, who was a children's governess, not for the old and fatuous reason that she "loved children," but for the new and intelligent reason that she was attracted by the child-mind as a study and was certificated and diplomaed in the study of children as an exact science,--Child Welfare as she called it. Miss Prescott had complete charge of the children while they were tiny and while they were growing up to eleven and nine and Benji to seven years old. She taught them their lessons (on her own, the new, principles) and on the same principles their habits and the formation of their characters. It might roundly be said that everything troublesome in regard to the children was left to Miss Prescott, and, left to her, came never between the children and their mother. Their mother only enjoyed her children, presented to her fresh, clean and happy for the purpose of her enjoyment; and the children only enjoyed their mother, visiting them smiling, devoted, unworried, for the purpose of their happiness.

It was a perfect, and a mutually beneficial arrangement. As there had been, before the children came, two independent lives behind the gamboge door, so, with the occupation of the nurseries, there were, as it might be, three independent households, mingling, at selected times, only for purposes of happiness.

It was perfect. In the summer a house was taken at Cromer by the sea and there, all through the fine weather, Miss Prescott was installed with her charges. Their mother had three weeks from Field's in the summer and she and their father would spend the whole of it, and often week-ends, at Cromer idling and playing with their darlings.

That was jolly. The children a.s.sociated nothing whatever but happiness with their parents.