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disjointing of the meal, by reflex action, made Emily and me more accurate. We were exquisitely attentive, and polite to a nicety. Our very speech was clipped with precision, as we drifted to a discussion of Strauss and Debussy. This of course put a breach between us two and our hosts, but we could not help it; it was our only way of covering over the awkwardness of the occasion. George sat looking glum and listening to us. Meg was quite indifferent. She listened occasionally, but her position as mother made her impregnable. She sat eating calmly, looking down now and again at her baby, holding us in slight scorn, babblers that we were. She was secure in her high maternity; she was mistress and sole authority. George, as father, was first servant; as an indifferent father, she humiliated him and was hostile to his wishes. Emily and I were mere intruders, feeling ourselves such. After tea we went upstairs to wash our hands. The grandmother had had a second stroke of paralysis, and lay inert, almost stupified. Her large bulk upon the bed was horrible to me, and her face, with the muscles all slack and awry, seemed like some cruel cartoon. She spoke a few thick words to me. George asked her if she felt all right, or should he rub her. She turned her old eyes slowly to him.
“My leg — my leg a bit,” she said in her strange guttural.
He took off his coat, and pushing his hand under the bedclothes, sat rubbing the poor old woman’s limb patiently, slowly, for some time. She watched him for a moment, then without her turning her eyes from him, he passed out of her vision and she lay staring at nothing, in his direction.
“There,” he said at last, “is that any better then, Mother?”
“Ay, that’s a bit better,” she said slowly.
“Should I gi’e thee a drink?” he asked, lingering, wishing to minister all he could to her before he went.
She looked at him, and he brought the cup. She swallowed a few drops with difficulty.
“Doesn’t it make you miserable to have her always there?” I asked him, when we were in the next room. He sat down on the large white bed and laughed shortly.
“We’re used to it — we never notice her, poor old gran’ma.”
“But she must have made a difference to you — she must make a big difference at the bottom, even if you don’t know it,” I said.
“She’d got such a strong character,” he said, musing, “— she seemed to understand me. She was a real friend to me before she was so bad. Sometimes I happen to look at her — generally I never see her, you know how I mean — but sometimes I do — and then — it seems a bit rotten —”
He smiled at me peculiarly, “— it seems to take the shine off things,” he added, and then, smiling again with ugly irony —“She’s our skeleton in the closet.” He indicated her large bulk.
The church bells began to ring. The grey church stood on a rise among the fields not far away, like a handsome old stag looking over towards the inn. The five bells began to play, and the sound came beating upon the window.
“I hate Sunday night,” he said restlessly.
“Because you’ve nothing to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems like a gag, and you feel helpless. I don’t want to go to church, and hark at the bells, they make you feel uncomfortable.”
“What do you generally do?” I asked.
“Feel miserable — I’ve been down to Mayhew’s these last two Sundays, and Meg’s been pretty mad. She says it’s the only night I could stop with her, or go out with her. But if I stop with her, what can I do? — and if we go out, it’s only for half an hour. I hate Sunday night — it’s a dead end.”
When we went downstairs, the table was cleared, and Meg was bathing the dark baby. Thus she was perfect. She handled the bonny, naked child with beauty of gentleness. She kneeled over him nobly. Her arms and her bosom and her throat had a nobility of roundness and softness. She drooped her head with the grace of a Madonna, and her movements were lovely, accurate and exquisite, like an old song perfectly sung. Her voice, playing and soothing round the curved limbs of the baby, was like water, soft as wine in the sun, running with delight.
We watched humbly, sharing the wonder from afar.
Emily was very envious of Meg’s felicity. She begged to be allowed to bathe the second baby. Meg granted her bounteous permission:
“Yes, you can wash him if you like, but what about your frock?”
Emily, delighted, began to undress the baby whose hair was like crocus petals. Her fingers trembled with pleasure as she loosed the little tapes. I always remember the inarticulate delight with which she took the child in her hands, when at last his little shirt was removed, and felt his soft white limbs and body. A distinct, glowing atmosphere seemed suddenly to burst out around her and the child, leaving me outside. The moment before she had been very near to me, her eyes searching mine, her spirit clinging timidly about me. Now I was put away, quite alone, neglected, forgotten, outside the glow which surrounded the woman and the baby.
“Ha! — Ha-a-a!” she said with a deep-throated vowel, as she put her face against the child’s small breasts, so round, almost like a girl’s, silken and warm and wonderful. She kissed him, and touched him, and hovered over him, drinking in his baby sweetnesses, the sweetness of the laughing little mouth’s wide, wet kisses, of the round, waving limbs, of the little shoulders so winsomely curving to the arms and the breasts, of the tiny soft neck hidden very warm beneath the chin, tasting deliciously with her lips and her cheeks all the exquisite softness, silkiness, warmth, and tender life of the baby’s body.
A woman is so ready to disclaim the body of a man’s love; she yields him her own soft beauty with so much gentle patience and regret; she clings to his neck, to his head and his cheeks, fondling them for the soul’s meaning that is there, and shrinking from his passionate limbs and his body. It was with some perplexity, some anger and bitterness that I watched Emily moved almost to ecstasy by the baby’s small, innocuous person.
“Meg never found any pleasure in me as she does in the kids,” said George bitterly, for himself.
The child, laughing and crowing, caught his hands in Emily’s hair and pulled dark tresses down, while she cried out in remonstrance, and tried to loosen the small fists that were shut so fast. She took him from the water and rubbed him dry, with marvellous gentle little rubs, he kicking and expostulating. She brought his fine hair into one silken up-springing of ruddy gold like an aureole. She played with his tiny balls of toes, like wee pink mushrooms, till at last she dare detain him no longer, when she put on his flannel and his night-gown and gave him to Meg.
Before carrying him to bed Meg took him to feed him. His mouth was stretched round the nipple as he sucked, his face was pressed closer and closer to the breast, his fingers wandered over the fine white globe, blue-veined and heavy, trying to hold it. Meg looked down upon him with a consuming passion of tenderness, and Emily clasped her hands and leaned forward to him. Even thus they thought him exquisite.
When the twins were both asleep, I must tiptoe upstairs to see them. They lay cheek by cheek in the crib next the large white bed, breathing little, ruffling breaths, out of unison, so small and pathetic with their tiny shut fingers. I remembered the two larks.
From the next room came a heavy sound of the old woman’s breathing. Meg went in to her. As in passing I caught sight of the large, prone figure in the bed, I thought of Guy de Maupassant’s “Toine”, who acted as an incubator.
Chapter 5
The Dominant Motif of Suffering
The old woman lay still another year, then she suddenly sank out of life. George ceased to write to me, but I learned his news elsewhere. He became more and more intimate with the Mayhews. After old Mayhew’s bankruptcy, the two sons had remained on