Watersprings Part 17

"That's good news for me," said Howard, "and it is absolutely true."

XXIX

THE CHILD

The day on which Howard learned that Maud would bear him a child was a day of very strangely mixed emotions. He saw how the hope dawned on the spirit of Maud like the rising of a star, and he could rejoice in that with whole-hearted joy, in the mere sharing of a beautiful secret; but it was strange to him to see how to Maud it seemed like the realisation and fulfilling of all desire, the entering into a kingdom; it was not only the satisfaction of all the deepest vital processes, but something glorious, unthinkable, the crowning of destiny, the summit of life.

There was no reasoning about it; it was the purest and finest instinct.

But with Howard it was not thus. He could not look beyond Maud; and it seemed to him like the dawning of a new influence, a new fealty, which would almost come in between him and his wife, a division of her affections. She seemed to him, in the few tremulous words they spoke, to have her eyes fixed on something beyond him; it was not so much a gift that she was bringing him as a claim of further devotion. He realised with a shock of surprise that in the books he had read, in the imagined crises of life, the thought of the child, the heir, the offshoot, was supposed to come as the crown of father's and mother's hopes alike, and that it was not so with him. Was he jealous of the new claim? It was something like that. He found himself resolving and determining that no hint of this should ever escape him; he even felt deeply ashamed that such a thought should even have crossed his mind.

He ought rather to rejoice wholly and completely in Maud's happiness; but he desired her alone, and so pa.s.sionately that he could not bear to have any part of the current of her soul diverted from him. As he looked forward through the years, it was Maud and himself, in scene after scene; other relations, other influences, other surroundings might fade and decay--but children, however beautiful and delightful, making the house glad with life and laughter, he was not sure that he wanted them. Yet he had always thought that he possessed a strong paternal instinct, an interest in young life, in opening problems. Had that all, he wondered, been a mere interest, a thing to exercise his energy and amiability upon, and had his enjoyment of it all depended upon his real detachment, upon the fact that his responsibility was only a temporary one? It was all very bewildering to him. Moreover, his quiet and fertile imagination flashed suddenly through pictures of what his beloved Maud might have to endure, such a frail child as she was--illness, wretchedness, suffering. Would he be equal to all that?

Could he play the role of tranquil patience, of comforting sympathy? He determined not to antic.i.p.ate that, but it blew like a cold wind on his spirit; he could not bear that the sunshine of life should be clouded.

He had a talk with his aunt on the subject; she had divined, in some marvellous way, the fact that the news had disturbed him; and she said, "Of course, dear Howard, I quite understand that this is not the same thing to you as it is to Maud and me. It is one of the things which divide, and must always divide, men from women. But there is something beyond what you see: I know that it must seem to you as if something almost disconcerting had pa.s.sed over life--as if such a hope must absorb the heart of a mother; but there is a thing you cannot know, and that is the infinite dearness in which this involves you. You would think perhaps that it could not be increased in Maud's case, but it is increased a hundredfold--it is a splendour, a worship, as of divine creative power. Don't be afraid! Don't look forward! You will see day by day that this has brought Maud's love for you to a point of which you could hardly dream. Words can't touch these things: you must just believe me that it is so. You will think that a childless wife like myself cannot know this. There is a strange joy even in childlessness, but it is the joy that comes from the sharing of a sorrow; but the joy which comes from sharing a joy is higher yet."

"Yes," said Howard, "I know it, and I believe it. I will tell you very frankly that you have looked into my very heart; but you have not seen quite into the depths: I see my own weakness and selfishness clearly.

With every part of my mind and reason I see the wonder and strength of this; and I shall feel it presently. What has shocked me is just my lack of the truer instinct; but then," he added, smiling, "that's just the shadow of comfort and ease and the intellectual life: one goes so far on one's way without stumbling across these big emotions; and when one does actually meet them, one is frightened at their size and strength. You must advise and help me. You know, I am sure, that my love for Maud is the strongest, largest, purest thing, beyond all comparison and belief, that has ever happened to me. I am never for a single instant unaware of it. I sometimes think there is nothing else left of me; and then this happens, and I see that I have not gone deep enough yet."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, smiling, "life is like the sea, I think. When one is a child, it is just a great plain of waters, with little ships sailing on it: it is pleasant to play by, with breaking waves to wade in, and little treasures thrown up on its rim; then, as one knows more, one realises that it is another world, full of its own urgent life, quite regardless of man, and over which man has no power, except by a little trickery in places. Man is just a tiresome, far-off incident, his ships like little moving shadows, his nets and lines like small fretful devices. But the old wise monsters of the depths live their own lives; never seen perhaps, or even suspected, by men. That's all very silly and fanciful, of course! But old and invalided as I am, I seem to be diving deeper and deeper into life, and finding it full of surprises and mysteries and utterly unexpected things."

"Well," said Howard, "I am still a child on the sh.o.r.e, picking up sh.e.l.ls, fishing in the shallows. But I have learned something of late, and it is wonderful beyond thought--so wonderful that I feel sometimes as if I was dreaming, and should wake up to find myself in some other century!"

It did indeed soon dawn upon Howard that there was a change in Maud, that their relations had somehow altered and deepened. The little barrier of age, for one thing, which he had sometimes felt, seemed obliterated. There had been in Howard's mind a sense that he had known a number of hard facts and ugly features about life, had been aware of mean, combative, fierce, cruel elements which were hidden from Maud.

Now this all seemed to be purged away; if these things were there, they were not worth knowing, except to be disregarded. They were base material knowledge which one must not even recognise; they were not real forces at all, only ugly, stubborn obstacles, through which life must pa.s.s, like water flowing among rocks; they were not life, only the channel of life, through which one pa.s.sed to something more free and generous. He began to perceive that such things mattered nothing at all to Maud; that her life would have been just as fine in quality if she had lived in the smallest cottage among the most sordid cares. He saw that she possessed the wisdom which he had missed, because she lived in and for emotion and affection, and that all material things existed only to enshrine and subserve emotion.

Their life seemed to take on a new colour and intensity. They talked less; up till now it had been a perpetual delight to Howard to elicit Maud's thoughts and fancies about a thousand things, about books, people, ideas. Her prejudices, ignorances, enthusiasms half charmed, half amused him. But now they could sit or walk silent together in an even more tranquil happiness; nearness was enough, and thought seemed to pa.s.s between them without need of speech. Howard began to resume his work; it was enough that Maud should sit by, reading, working, writing.

A glance would pa.s.s between them and suffice.

One day Howard laid down his pen, and looking up, having finished a chapter, saw that Maud's eyes were fixed upon him with an anxious intentness. She was sitting in a low chair near the fire, and an open book lay disregarded on her knee. He went across to her and sat down on a low chair beside her, taking her hand in his.

"What is it, dear child?" he said. "Am I very selfish and stupid to sit here without a word like this?"

Maud put her lips to his hand, and laughed a contented laugh. "Oh no, no," she said; "I like to see you hard at work--there seems no need to say anything--it's just you and me!"

"Well," said Howard, "you must just tell me what you were thinking--you had travelled a long way beyond that."

"Not out of your reach," said Maud; "I was just thinking how different men and women were, and how I liked you to be different. I was remembering how awfully mysterious you were at first--so full to the brim of strange things which I could not fathom. I always seemed to be dislodging something I had never thought of. I used to wonder how you could find time, in the middle of it all, to care about me: you were always giving me something. But now it has all grown so much simpler and more wonderful too. It's like what you said about Cambridge long ago, the dark secret doorways, the hidden gardens; I see now that all those ideas and thoughts are only things you are carrying with you, like luggage. They are not part of you at all. Don't you know how, when one is quite a child, a person's house seems to be all a mysterious part of himself? One thinks he has chosen and arranged it all, knows where everything is and what it means--everything seems to be a sort of deliberate expression of his tastes and ideas--and, then one gets older, and finds out that people don't know what is in their houses at all--there are rooms into which they never go; and then one finds that they don't even see the things in their own rooms, have forgotten how they came there, wouldn't know if they were taken away. My, I used to feel as if the scents and smells of houses were all arranged and chosen by their owners. It's like that with you; all the things you know and remember, the words you speak, are not YOU at all; I see and feel you now apart from all that."

"I am afraid I have lost what novelists call my glamour," said Howard.

"You have found me out, the poor, shivering, timid thing that sits like a wizard in the middle of his properties, only hoping that the stuffed crocodile and the skeleton will frighten his visitors."

Maud laughed. "Well, I am not frightened any more," she said. "I doubt if you could frighten me if you tried. I wonder how I should feel if I saw you angry or chilly. Are you ever angry, I wonder?"

"I think some of my pupils would say that I could be very disagreeable," said Howard. "I don't think that I was ever very fierce, but I have realised that I was on occasions very unpleasant."

"Well, I'll wait and see," said Maud; "but what I was going to say was that you seem to me different--hardly the person I married. I used to wonder a little at first how I had had the impudence . . . and then I used to think that perhaps some day you would wake up, and find you had come to the bottom of the well, but you never seemed disappointed."

"Disappointed!" said Howard; "what terrible rubbish! Why Maud, don't you KNOW what you have done for me? You have put the whole thing straight. It's just that. I was full of vanities and thoughts and bits of knowledge, and I really think I thought them important--they ARE important too, like food and drink--one must have them--at least men must--but they don't matter; at least it doesn't matter what they are.

Men have always to be making and doing things--business, money, positions, duties; but the point is to know that they are unimportant, and yet to go on doing them as if they mattered--one must do that--seriously and not solemnly; but you have somehow put all that in the right place; and I know now what matters and what does not. There, do you call that nothing?"

"Perhaps we have found it out together," said Maud; "the only difference is that you have the courage to tell me that you were wrong, while I have never even dared to tell you what a hollow sham I am, and what a mean and peevish child I was before you came on the scene."

"Well, we won't look into your dark past," said Howard. "I am quite content with what they call the net result!" and then they sate together in silence, and had no further need of words.

x.x.x

CAMBRIDGE AGAIN

Howard was summoned to Cambridge in June for a College meeting. He was very glad to see Cambridge and the familiar faces; but he had not been parted from Maud for a day since their marriage, and he was rather amazed to find, not that he missed her, but how continuously he missed her from moment to moment; the fact that he could not compare notes with her about every incident seemed to rob the incidents of their savour, and to produce a curious hampering of his thoughts. A change, too, seemed to have pa.s.sed over the College; his rooms were just as he had left them, but everything seemed to have narrowed and contracted.

He saw a great many of the undergraduates, and indeed was delighted to find how they came in to see him.

Guthrie was one of the first to arrive, and Howard was glad to meet him alone. Howard was sorry to see that the cheerful youth had evidently been feeling acutely what had happened; he had not lost his spirits, but he had a rather worn aspect. He inquired about the Windlow party, and they talked of indifferent things; but when Guthrie rose to go, he said, speaking with great diffidence, "I wanted to say one thing to you, and now I do not know how to express it; it is that I don't want you to think I feel in any way aggrieved--that would be simply absurd--but more than that, I want to say that I think you behaved quite splendidly at Windlow--really splendidly! I hope you don't think it is impertinent for me to say that, but I want you to know how grateful I am to you--Jack told me what had happened--and I thought that if I said nothing, you might feel uncomfortable. Please don't feel anything of the kind--I only wish with all my heart that I could think I could behave as you did if I had been in your place, and I want to be friends."

"Yes indeed," said Howard, "I think it is awfully good of you to speak about it. You won't expect me," he added, smiling, "to say that I wish it had turned out otherwise; but I do hope you will be happy, with all my heart; and you will know that you will have a real welcome at Windlow if ever you care to come there."

The young man shook hands in silence with Howard, and went out with a smile. "Oh, I shall be all right," he said.

Jack sate up late with Howard and treated him to a long grumble.

"I do hope to goodness you will come back to Cambridge," he said. "You must simply make Maud come. You must use your influence, your beautiful influence, of which we hear so much. Seriously, I do miss you here very much, and so does everybody else. Your pupils are in an awful stew.

They say that you got them through the Trip without boring them, and that Crofts bores them and won't get them through. This place rather gets on my nerves now. The Dons don't confide in me, and I don't see things from their angle, as my father says. I think you somehow managed to keep them reasonable; they are narrow-minded men, I think."

"This is rather a shower of compliments," said Howard. "But I think I very likely shall come back. I don't think Maud would mind."

"Mind!" said Jack, "why you wind that girl round your little finger.

She writes about you as if you were an archangel; and look here, I am sorry I took a gloomy view. It's all right; you were the right person.

Freddy Guthrie would never have done for Maud--he's in a great way about it still, but I tell him he may be thankful to have escaped. Maud is a mountain-top kind of girl; she could never have got on without a lot of aspirations, she couldn't have settled down to the country-house kind of life. You are a sort of privilege, you know, and all that; Freddy Guthrie would never have been a privilege."

"That's rather a horror!" said Howard; "you mustn't let these things out; you make me nervous!"

Jack laughed. "If your brother-in-law mayn't say this to you, I don't know who may. But seriously, really quite seriously, you are a bigger person than I thought. I'll tell you why. I had a kind of feeling that you ought not to let me speak to you as you do, that you ought to have snapped my head off. And then you seemed too much upset by what I said.

I don't know if it was your tact; but you had your own way all the time, with me and with everybody; you seemed to give way at every point, and yet you carried out your programme. I thought you hadn't much backbone--there, the cat's out; and now I find that we were all dancing to your music. I like people to do that, and it amuses me to find that I danced as obediently as anyone, when I really thought I could make you do as I wished. I admire your way of going on: you make everyone think that you value their opinion, and yet you know exactly what you want and get it."

Howard laughed. "I really am not such a diplomatist as that, Jack! I am not a humbug; but I will tell you frankly what happens. What people say and think, and even how they look, does affect me very much at the time; but I have a theory that most people get what they really want.

One has to be very careful what one wants in this world, not because one is disappointed, but because Providence hands it one with a smile; and then it often turns out to be an ironical gift--a punishment in disguise."

"Maud shall hear that," said Jack; "a punishment in disguise--that will do her good, and take her down a peg or two. So you have found it out already?"

"My dear Jack," said Howard, "if you say anything of the kind, you will repent it. I am not going to have Maud bothered just now with any nonsense. Do you hear that? The frankness of your family is one of its greatest charms--but you don't quite know how much the frankness of babes and sucklings can hurt--and you are not to experiment on Maud."

Jack looked at Howard with a smile. "Here's the real man at last--the tyrant's vein! Of course, I obey. I didn't really mean it; and I like to hear you speak like that; it's rather fine."