by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE CHILD OF THE AGES
Sec. 1
When the intellectual history of this time comes to be written, nothingI think will stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf in qualitybetween the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations thatare going on and the general thought of other educated sections of thecommunity. I do not mean that the scientific men are as a whole a classof supermen, dealing with and thinking about everything in a wayaltogether better than the common run of humanity, but that in their ownfield, they think and work with an intensity, an integrity, a breadth,boldness, patience, thoroughness and faithfulness that (excepting only afew artists) puts their work out of all comparison with any other humanactivity. Often the field in which the work is done is very narrow, andalmost universally the underlying philosophy is felt rather thanapprehended. A scientific man may be large and deep-minded, deliberateand personally detached in his work, and hasty, commonplace andsuperficial in every other relation of life. Nevertheless it is truethat in these particular directions the human mind has achieved a newand higher quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity, self-detachmentand self-abnegating vigour of criticism that tend to spread out and mustultimately spread out to every other human affair. In theseuncontroversial issues at least mankind has learnt the rich rewards thatensue from patience and infinite pains.
The peculiar circumstances of Trafford's birth and upbringing hadaccentuated his natural disposition toward this new thoroughness ofintellectual treatment which has always distinguished the great artist,and which to-day is also the essential quality of the scientific method.He had lived apart from any urgency to produce and compete in the commonbusiness of the world; his natural curiosities, fed and encouraged byhis natural gifts, had grown into a steady passion for clarity andknowledge. But with him there was no specialization. He brought out fromhis laboratory into the everyday affairs of the world the same scepticalrestraint of judgment which is the touchstone of scientific truth. Thismade him a tepid and indeed rather a scornful spectator of political andsocial life. Party formulae, international rivalries, social customs,and very much of the ordinary law of our state impressed him as a kindof fungoid growth out of a fundamental intellectual muddle. It allmaintained itself hazardously, changing and adapting itselfunintelligently to unseen conditions. He saw no ultimate truth in thisseething welter of human efforts, no tragedy as yet in its defeats, novalue in its victories. It had to go on, he believed, until thespreading certitudes of the scientific method pierced its unsubstantialthickets, burst its delusive films, drained away its folly. AuntPlessington's talk of order and progress and the influence of herMovement impressed his mind very much as the cackle of some larger kindof hen--which cackles because it must. Only Aunt Plessington being humansimply imagined the egg. She laid--on the plane of the ideal. When thegreat nonsensical issues between liberal and conservative, betweensocialist and individualist, between "Anglo-Saxon" and "Teuton," betweenthe "white race" and the "yellow race" arose in Trafford's company, hewould if he felt cheerful take one side or the other as chance or hisamusement with his interlocutors determined, and jest and gibe at theopponent's inconsistencies, and if on the other hand he chanced to beirritable he would lose his temper at this "chewing of mesembryanthemum"and sulk into silence. "Chewing mesembryanthemum" was one of Trafford'sfavourite images,--no doubt the reader knows that abundant fleshyMediterranean weed and the weakly unpleasant wateriness of itssubstance. He went back to his laboratory and his proper work after suchdiscussions with a feeling of escape, as if he shut a door upon a dirtyand undisciplined market-place crowded with mental defectives. Yet evenbefore he met and married Marjorie, there was a queer little undertow ofthought in his mind which insisted that this business could not end withdoor-slamming, that he didn't altogether leave the social confusionoutside his panels when he stood alone before his apparatus, and thatsooner or later that babble of voices would force his defences andovercome his disdain.
His particular work upon the intimate constitution of matter hadbroadened very rapidly in his hands. The drift of his work had been toidentify all colloids as liquid solutions of variable degrees ofviscosity, and to treat crystalline bodies as the only solids. He haddealt with oscillating processes in colloid bodies with especialreference to living matter. He had passed from a study of the meltingand toughening of glass to the molecular structure of a number ofelastic bodies, and so, by a characteristic leap into botanicalphysiology, to the states of resinous and gummy substances at the momentof secretion. He worked at first upon a false start, and then resumed todiscover a growing illumination. He found himself in the presence ofphenomena that seemed to him to lie near the still undiscoveredthreshold to the secret processes of living protoplasm. He was, as itwere, breaking into biology by way of molecular physics. He spent manylong nights of deep excitement, calculating and arranging thedevelopment of these seductive intimations. It was this work which hismarriage had interrupted, and to which he was now returning.
He was surprised to find how difficult it was to take it up again. Hehad been only two months away from it, and yet already it had not alittle of the feeling of a relic taken from a drawer. Something hadfaded. It was at first as if a film had come over his eyes, so that hecould no longer see these things clearly and subtly and closely. Hissenses, his emotions, had been living in a stirring and vividillumination. Now in this cool quietude bright clouds of colouredmemory-stuff swam distractingly before his eyes. Phantom kisses on hislips, the memory of touches and the echoing vibrations of an adorablevoice, the thought of a gay delightful fireside and the freshrecollection of a companion intensely felt beside him, effaced thedelicate profundities of this dim place. Durgan hovered about him,helpful and a mute reproach. Trafford had to force his attention dailyfor the better part of two weeks before he had fully recovered the fineenchanting interest of that suspended work.
Sec. 2
At last one day he had the happiness of possession again. He had exactlythe sensation one gets when some hitherto intractable piece of a machineone is putting together, clicks neatly and beyond all hoping, into itsplace. He found himself working in the old style, with the hoursslipping by disregarded. He sent out Durgan to get him tobacco and teaand smoked-salmon sandwiches, and he stayed in the laboratory all night.He went home about half-past five, and found a white-faced, red-eyedMarjorie still dressed, wrapped in a travelling-rug, and crumpled andasleep in his study arm-chair beside the grey ashes of an extinct fire.
In the instant before she awoke he could see what a fragile and pitifulbeing a healthy and happy young wife can appear. Her pose revealed anunsuspected slender weakness of body, her face something infantile andwistful he had still to reckon with. She awoke with a start and staredat him for a moment, and at the room about her. "Oh, where have youbeen?" she asked almost querulously. "Where _have_ you been?"
"But my dear!" he said, as one might speak to a child, "why aren't youin bed? It's just dawn."
"Oh," she said, "I waited and I waited. It seemed you _must_ come. Iread a book. And then I fell asleep." And then with a sob of feebleself-pity, "And here I am!" She rubbed the back of her hand into one eyeand shivered. "I'm cold," she said, "and I want some tea."
"Let's make some," said Trafford.
"It's been horrible waiting," said Marjorie without moving; "horrible!Where have you been?"
"I've been working. I got excited by my work. I've been at thelaboratory. I've had the best spell of work I've ever had since ourmarriage."
"But I have been up all night!" she cried with her face and voicesoftening to tears. "How _could_ you? How _could_ you?"
He was surprised by her weeping. He was still more surprised by theself-abandonment that allowed her to continue. "I've been working," herepeated, and then looked about with a man's helplessness for the teaapparatus. One must have hot water and a teapot and a kettle; he wouldfind those in the kitchen. He strolled thoughtfully out of the room,thinking out the further details of tea
-making all mixed up withamazement at Marjorie, while she sat wiping her eyes with a crumpledpocket-handkerchief. Presently she followed him down with the rug abouther like a shawl, and stood watching him as he lit a fire of wood andpaper among the ashes in the kitchen fireplace. "It's been dreadful,"she said, not offering to help.
"You see," he said, on his knees, "I'd really got hold of my work atlast."
"But you should have sent----"
"I was thinking of my work. I clean forgot."
"Forgot?"
"Absolutely."
"Forgot--_me!_"
"Of course," said Trafford, with a slightly puzzled air, "you don't seeit as I do."
The kettle engaged him for a time. Then he threw out a suggestion."We'll have to have a telephone."
"I couldn't imagine where you were. I thought of all sorts of things. Ialmost came round--but I was so horribly afraid I mightn't find you."
He renewed his suggestion of a telephone.
"So that if I really want you----" said Marjorie. "Or if I just want tofeel you're there."
"Yes," said Trafford slowly, jabbing a piece of firewood into the glow;but it was chiefly present in his mind that much of that elaborateexperimenting of his wasn't at all a thing to be cut athwart by theexasperating gusts of a telephone bell clamouring for attention.Hitherto the laboratory telephone had been in the habit of disconnectingitself early in the afternoon.
And yet after all it was this instrument, the same twisted wire andlittle quivering tympanum, that had brought back Marjorie into his life.
Sec. 3
And now Trafford fell into a great perplexity of mind. His banker hadcalled his attention to the fact that his account was overdrawn to theextent of three hundred and thirteen pounds, and he had been under thatvague sort of impression one always has about one's current account thathe was a hundred and fifty or so to the good. His first impression wasthat those hitherto infallible beings, those unseen gnomes of thepass-book whose lucid figures, neat tickings, and unrelenting additionsconstituted banks to his imagination, must have made a mistake; hissecond that some one had tampered with a cheque. His third thoughtpointed to Marjorie and the easy circumstances of his home. For afortnight now she had been obviously ailing, oddly irritable; he did notunderstand the change in her, but it sufficed to prevent his taking thething to her at once and going into it with her as he would have doneearlier. Instead he had sent for his pass-book, and in the presence ofits neat columns realized for the first time the meaning of Marjorie's"three hundred pounds." Including half-a-dozen cheques to Oxbridgetradesmen for her old debts, she had spent, he discovered, nearly sevenhundred and fifty.
He sat before the little bundle of crumpled strips of pink and white,perforated, purple stamped and effaced, in a state of extremeastonishment. It was no small factor in his amazement to note how verycarelessly some of those cheques of Marjorie's had been written. Severalshe had not even crossed. The effect of it all was that she'd just spenthis money--freely--with an utter disregard of the consequences.
Up to that moment it had never occurred to Trafford that anybody onereally cared for, could be anything but punctilious about money. Nowhere, with an arithmetical exactitude of demonstration, he perceivedthat Marjorie wasn't.
It was so tremendous a discovery for him, so disconcerting andstartling, that he didn't for two days say a word to her about it. Hecouldn't think of a word to say. He felt that even to put these factsbefore her amounted to an accusation of disloyalty and selfishness thathe hadn't the courage to make. His work stopped altogether. He struggledhourly with that accusation. Did she realize----? There seemed no escapefrom his dilemma; either she didn't care or she didn't understand!
His thoughts went back to the lake of Orta, when he had put all hismoney at her disposal. She had been surprised, and now he perceived shehad also been a little frightened. The chief excuse he could find forher was that she was inexperienced--absolutely inexperienced.
Even now, of course, she was drawing fresh cheques....
He would have to pull himself together, and go into the whole thing--forall its infinite disagreeableness--with her....
But it was Marjorie who broached the subject.
He had found work at the laboratory unsatisfactory, and after lunchingat his club he had come home and gone to his study in order to think outthe discussion he contemplated with her. She came in to him as he satat his desk. "Busy?" she said. "Not very," he answered, and she came upto him, kissed his head, and stood beside him with her hand on hisshoulder.
"Pass-book?" she asked.
He nodded.
"I've been overrunning."
"No end."
The matter was opened. What would she say?
She bent to his ear and whispered. "I'm going to overrun some more."
His voice was resentful. "You _can't_," he said compactly withoutlooking at her. "You've spent--enough."
"There's--things."
"What things?"
Her answer took some time in coming. "We'll have to give a weddingpresent to Daffy.... I shall want--some more furniture."
Well, he had to go into it now. "I don't think you can have it," hesaid, and then as she remained silent, "Marjorie, do you know how muchmoney I've got?"
"Six thousand."
"I _had_. But we've spent nearly a thousand pounds. Yes--one thousandpounds--over and above income. We meant to spend four hundred. And now,we've got--hardly anything over five."
"Five thousand," said Marjorie.
"Five thousand."
"And there's your salary."
"Yes, but at this pace----"
"Dear," said Marjorie, and her hands came about his neck, "dear--there'ssomething----"
She broke off. An unfamiliar quality in her voice struck into him. Heturned his head to see her face, rose to his feet staring at her.
This remarkable young woman had become soft and wonderful as April hillsacross which clouds are sweeping. Her face was as if he had never seenit before; her eyes bright with tears.
"Oh! don't let's spoil things by thinking of money," she said. "I've gotsomething----" Her voice fell to a whisper. "Don't let's spoil things bythinking of money.... It's too good, dear, to be true. It's too good tobe true. It makes everything perfect.... We'll have to furnish thatlittle room. I didn't dare to hope it--somehow. I've been so excited andafraid. But we've got to furnish that little room there--that emptylittle room upstairs, dear, that we left over.... Oh my _dear!_ my_dear!_"
Sec. 4
The world of Trafford and Marjorie was filled and transfigured by theadvent of their child.
For two days of abundant silences he had been preparing a statement ofhis case for her, he had been full of the danger to his research and allthe waste of his life that her extravagance threatened. He wanted totell her just all that his science meant to him, explain how his incomeand life had all been arranged to leave him, mind and time and energy,free for these commanding investigations. His life was to him theservice of knowledge--or futility. He had perceived that she did notunderstand this in him; that for her, life was a blaze of eagerly soughtexperiences and gratifications. So far he had thought out things and hadthem ready for her. But now all this impending discussion vanished outof his world. Their love was to be crowned by the miracle of parentage.This fact flooded his outlook and submerged every other consideration.
This manifest probability came to him as if it were an unforeseenmarvel. It was as if he had never thought of such a thing before, asthough a fact entirely novel in the order of the universe had come intoexistence. Marjorie became again magical and wonderful for him, but in amanner new and strange, she was grave, solemn, significant. He wasfilled with a passionate solicitude for her welfare, and a passionatedesire to serve her. It seemed impossible to him that only a day or soago he should have been accusing her in his heart of disloyalty, andsearching for excuses and mitigations....
All the freshness of his first love for Marjorie returned, his keensense of the swee
t gallantry of her voice and bearing, his admirationfor the swift, falconlike swoop of her decisions, for the grace andpoise of her body, and the steady frankness of her eyes; but now it wasall charged with his sense of this new joint life germinating at theheart of her slender vigour, spreading throughout her being to change italtogether into womanhood for ever. In this new light his passion forresearch and all the scheme of his life appeared faded and unworthy, asmuch egotism as if he had been devoted to hunting or golf or any suchaimless preoccupation. Fatherhood gripped him and faced him about. Itwas manifestly a monstrous thing that he should ever have expectedMarjorie to become a mere undisturbing accessory to the selfishintellectualism of his career, to shave and limit herself to a merebachelor income, and play no part of her own in the movement of theworld. He knew better now. Research must fall into its proper place,and for his immediate business he must set to work to supplement hismanifestly inadequate resources.
At first he could form no plan at all for doing that. He determined thatresearch must still have his morning hours until lunch-time, and, heprivately resolved, some part of the night. The rest of his day, hethought, he would set aside for a time to money-making. But he wasaltogether inexperienced in the methods of money-making; it was a newproblem, and a new sort of problem to him altogether. He discoveredhimself helpless and rather silly in the matter. The more obviouspossibilities seemed to be that he might lecture upon his science orwrite. He communicated with a couple of lecture agencies, and was amazedat their scepticism; no doubt he knew his science, on that point theywere complimentary in a profuse, unconvincing manner, but could heinterest like X--and here they named a notorious quack--could he _draw_?He offered Science Notes to a weekly periodical; the editor answeredthat for the purposes of his publication he preferred, as betweenprofessors and journalists, journalists. "You real scientific men," hesaid, "are no doubt a thousand times more accurate and novel and allthat, but as no one seems able to understand you----" He went to his oldfellow-student, Gwenn, who was editing _The Scientific Review_, andthrough him he secured some semi-popular lectures, which involved, hefound, travelling about twenty-nine miles weekly at the rate offour-and-sixpence a mile--counting nothing for the lectures. AfterwardsGwenn arranged for some regular notes on physics and micro-chemistry.Trafford made out a weekly time-table, on whose white of dignity,leisure, and the honourable pursuit of knowledge, a diaper of red markedthe claims of domestic necessity.
Sec. 5
It was astonishing how completely this coming child dominated the wholeatmosphere and all the circumstances of the Traffords. It became theircentral fact, to which everything else turned and pointed. Its effect onMarjorie's circle of school and college friends was prodigious. She wasthe first of their company to cross the mysterious boundaries of awoman's life. She became to them a heroine mingled with something of thepriestess. They called upon her more abundantly and sat with her, notedthe change in her eyes and voice and bearing, talking with a kind of aweand a faint diffidence of the promised new life.
Many of them had been deeply tinged by the women's suffrage movement,the feminist note was strong among them, and when one afternoon OttilineWinchelsea brought round Agatha Alimony, the novelist, and Agatha saidin that deep-ringing voice of hers: "I hope it will be a girl, so thatpresently she may fight the battle of her sex," there was theprofoundest emotion. But when Marjorie conveyed that to Trafford he waslacking in response.
"I want a boy," he said, and, being pressed for a reason, explained:"Oh, one likes to have a boy. I want him with just your quick eyes andears, my dear, and just my own safe and certain hands."
Mrs. Pope received the news with that depth and aimless complexity ofemotion which had now become her habitual method with Marjorie. Shekissed and clasped her daughter, and thought confusedly over hershoulder, and said: "Of course, dear----. Oh, I _do_ so hope it won'tannoy your father." Daffy was "nice," but vague, and sufficientlyfeminist to wish it a daughter, and the pseudo-twins said "_Hoo_-ray!"and changed the subject at the earliest possible opportunity. ButTheodore was deeply moved at the prospect of becoming an uncle, and wentapart and mused deeply and darkly thereon for some time. It wasdifficult to tell just what Trafford's mother thought, she was complexand subtle, and evidently did not show Marjorie all that was in hermind; but at any rate it was clear the prospect of a grandchild pleasedand interested her. And about Aunt Plessington's views there was nomanner of doubt at all. She thought, and remarked judicially, as onemight criticize a game of billiards, that on the whole it was just alittle bit too soon.
Sec. 6
Marjorie kept well throughout March and April, and then suddenly shegrew unutterably weary and uncomfortable in London. The end of Aprilcame hot and close and dry--it might have been July for the heat--thescrap of garden wilted, and the streets were irritating with fine dustand blown scraps of paper and drifting straws. She could think ofnothing but the shade of trees, and cornfields under sunlight and theshadows of passing clouds. So Trafford took out an old bicycle andwandered over the home counties for three days, and at last hit upon alittle country cottage near Great Missenden, a cottage a couple of girlartists had furnished and now wanted to let. It had a long, untidyvegetable garden and a small orchard and drying-ground, with an old,superannuated humbug of a pear-tree near the centre surrounded by agreen seat, and high hedges with the promise of honeysuckle anddog-roses, and gaps that opened into hospitable beechwoods--woods notso thick but that there were glades of bluebells, bracken and, to beexact, in places embattled stinging-nettles. He took it and engaged aminute, active, interested, philoprogenitive servant girl for it, andtook Marjorie thither in a taxi-cab. She went out, wrapped in a shawl,and sat under the pear-tree and cried quietly with weakness andsentiment and the tenderness of afternoon sunshine, and forthwith beganto pick up wonderfully, and was presently writing to Trafford to buy hera dog to go for walks with, while he was away in London.
Trafford was still struggling along with his research in spite of aconstant gravitation to the cottage and Marjorie's side, but he was alsodoing his best to grapple with the difficulties of his financialsituation. His science notes, which were very uncongenial and difficultto do, and his lecturing, still left his income far behind hisexpenditure, and the problem of minimising the inevitable fresh inroadson his capital was insistent and distracting. He discovered that hecould manage his notes more easily and write a more popular article ifhe dictated to a typist instead of writing out the stuff in his ownmanuscript. Dictating made his sentences more copious and open, and theeffect of the young lady's by no means acquiescent back was to make himfar more explicit than he tended to be pen in hand. With a pen and alonehe felt the boredom of the job unendurably, and, to be through with it,became more and more terse, allusive, and compactly technical, after thestyle of his original papers. One or two articles by him were acceptedand published by the monthly magazines, but as he took what the editorssent him, he did not find this led to any excessive opulence....
But his heart was very much with Marjorie through all this time.Hitherto he had taken her health and vigour and companionship forgranted, and it changed his attitudes profoundly to find her now anailing thing, making an invincible appeal for restraint andconsideration and help. She changed marvellously, she gained a newdignity, and her complexion took upon itself a fresh, soft beauty. Hewould spend three or four days out of a week at the cottage, and longhours of that would be at her side, paper and notes of some forthcominglecture at hand neglected, talking to her consolingly and dreamingly.His thoughts were full of ideas about education; he was obsessed, as aremost intelligent young parents of the modern type, by the enormouspossibilities of human improvement that might be achieved--if only onecould begin with a baby from the outset, on the best lines, with thebest methods, training and preparing it--presumably for a cleaned andchastened world. Indeed he made all the usual discoveries of intelligentmodern young parents very rapidly, fully and completely, and overlookedmost of those practical difficulties that finally reduc
e them to humandimensions again in quite the normal fashion.
"I sit and muse sometimes when I ought to be computing," he said. "OldDurgan watches me and grunts. But think, if we take reasonable care,watch its phases, stand ready with a kindergarten toy directly itstretches out its hand--think what we can make of it!"...
"We will make it the most wonderful child in the world," said Marjorie."Indeed! what else can it be?"
"Your eyes," said Trafford, "and my hands."
"A girl."
"A boy."
He kissed her white and passive wrist.
Sec. 7
The child was born a little before expectation at the cottage throughouta long summer's night and day in early September. Its coming into theworld was a long and painful struggle; the general practitioner who hadseemed two days before a competent and worthy person enough, revealedhimself as hesitating, old-fashioned, and ill-equipped. He had alingering theological objection to the use of chloroform, and the nursefrom London sulked under his directions and came and discussed hismethods scornfully with Trafford. From sundown until daylight Traffordchafed in the little sitting-room and tried to sleep, and hoveredlistening at the foot of the narrow staircase to the room above. Helived through interminable hours of moaning and suspense....
The dawn and sunrise came with a quality of beautiful horror. For yearsafterwards that memory stood out among other memories as somethingpeculiarly strange and dreadful. Day followed an interminable night andbroke slowly. Things crept out of darkness, awoke as it were out ofmysteries and reclothed themselves in unsubstantial shadows andfaint-hued forms. All through that slow infiltration of the world withlight and then with colour, the universe it seemed was moaning andendeavouring, and a weak and terrible struggle went on and kept on inthat forbidden room whose windows opened upon the lightening world,dying to a sobbing silence, rising again to agonizing cries,fluctuating, a perpetual obstinate failure to achieve a tormenting end.He went out, and behold the sky was a wonder of pink flushed levelclouds and golden hope, and nearly every star except the morning starhad gone, the supine moon was pale and half-dissolved in blue, and thegrass which had been grey and wet, was green again, and the bushes andtrees were green. He returned and hovered in the passage, washed hisface, listened outside the door for age-long moments, and then went outagain to listen under the window....
He went to his room and shaved, sat for a long time thinking, and thensuddenly knelt by his bed and prayed. He had never prayed before in allhis life....
He returned to the garden, and there neglected and wet with dew was thecamp chair Marjorie had sat on the evening before, the shawl she hadbeen wearing, the novel she had been reading. He brought these things inas if they were precious treasures....
Light was pouring into the world again now. He noticed with an extremeparticularity the detailed dewy delicacy of grass and twig, the silveredges to the leaves of briar and nettle, the soft clearness of the mosson bank and wall. He noted the woods with the first warmth of autumntinting their green, the clear, calm sky, with just a wisp or so ofpurple cloud waning to a luminous pink on the brightening east, theexquisite freshness of the air. And still through the open window,incessant, unbearable, came this sound of Marjorie moaning, now dyingaway, now reviving, now weakening again....
Was she dying? Were they murdering her? It was incredible this torturecould go on. Somehow it must end. Chiefly he wanted to go in and killthe doctor. But it would do no good to kill the doctor!
At last the nurse came out, looking a little scared, to ask him to cyclethree miles away and borrow some special sort of needle that the fool ofa doctor had forgotten. He went, outwardly meek, and returning was metby the little interested servant, very alert and excited and rathersuperior--for here was something no man can do--with the news that hehad a beautiful little daughter, and that all was well with Marjorie.
He said "Thank God, thank God!" several times, and then went out intothe kitchen and began to eat some flabby toast and drink some lukewarmtea he found there. He was horribly fatigued. "Is she all right?" heasked over his shoulder, hearing the doctor's footsteps on thestairs....
They were very pontifical and official with him.
Presently they brought out a strange, wizened little animal, wailingvery stoutly, with a face like a very, very old woman, and reddish skinand hair--it had quite a lot of wet blackish hair of an incredibledelicacy of texture. It kicked with a stumpy monkey's legs and inturnedfeet. He held it: his heart went out to it. He pitied it beyond measure,it was so weak and ugly. He was astonished and distressed by the fact ofits extreme endearing ugliness. He had expected something strikinglypretty. It clenched a fist, and he perceived it had all its complementof fingers and ridiculous, pretentious little finger nails. Inside thatfist it squeezed his heart.... He did not want to give it back to them.He wanted to protect it. He felt they could not understand it orforgive, as he could forgive, its unjustifiable feebleness....
Later, for just a little while, he was permitted to seeMarjorie--Marjorie so spent, so unspeakably weary, and yet soreassuringly vital and living, so full of gentle pride and gentlercourage amidst the litter of surgical precaution, that the tears camestreaming down his face and he sobbed shamelessly as he kissed her."Little daughter," she whispered and smiled--just as she had alwayssmiled--that sweet, dear smile of hers!--and closed her eyes and saidno more....
Afterwards as he walked up and down the garden he remembered theirformer dispute and thought how characteristic of Marjorie it was to havea daughter in spite of all his wishes.
Sec. 8
For weeks and weeks this astonishing and unprecedented being filled theTraffords' earth and sky. Very speedily its minute quaintness passed,and it became a vigorous delightful baby that was, as the nurseexplained repeatedly and very explicitly, not only quite exceptional anddistinguished, but exactly everything that a baby should be. Its weightbecame of supreme importance; there was a splendid week when it put onnine ounces, and an indifferent one when it added only one. And thencame a terrible crisis. It was ill; some sort of infection had reachedit, an infantile cholera. Its temperature mounted to a hundred and threeand a half. It became a flushed misery, wailing with a pathetic feeblevoice. Then it ceased to wail. Marjorie became white-lipped andheavy-eyed from want of sleep, and it seemed to Trafford that perhapshis child might die. It seemed to him that the spirit of the universemust be a monstrous calivan since children had to die. He went for along walk through the October beechwoods, under a windy sky, and in adrift of falling leaves, wondering with a renewed freshness at thehaunting futilities of life.... Life was not futile--anything but that,but futility seemed to be stalking it, waiting for it.... When hereturned the child was already better, and in a few days it was wellagain--but very light and thin.
When they were sure of its safety, Marjorie and he confessed theextremity of their fears to one another. They had not dared to speakbefore, and even now they spoke in undertones of the shadow that hadhovered and passed over the dearest thing in their lives.