CHAPTER IX

The word love must not be narrowed or we shall lose the key to many a chamber of life. In our cross-section of life, which shows itself the most beautiful love? The love of Matthew which spends itself in pleasure in Cecily’s existence rather than in personal desire, the tornado which must storm the frail soul of Fliss, the rare devotion of Ellen, the servant, for her mistress, the fine normality of Dick’s feeling for his wife, or the love of Cecily herself, tormented and abused as such free-given love so often is tormented and abused by life? The spotlight of circumstance is turned now on one, now on another, as if seeking to find out.

Its light is focused on Cecily now. Dick knows about his expected child and every quality in his manhood has leapt into eager response to this proof of his own continuity. He cannot be too tender; he is fearful lest somehow things go wrong, and yet immensely sure that everything will be successful. He assures himself that this is a common happening and carries within himself the proud knowledge of an event that is absolutely unique. He is very curious about the physiological marvel, as all men are who for the first time watch themselves so mysteriously reproduced. And with it all--all the pride that he feels in his coming child--Cecily remains his young wife as well as his child’s mother and he feels apologetic that this must hurt her--even endanger her--and he loves her beyond his pride and hope. Cecily’s mother knows and surrounds Cecily with every precaution and comfort, seeming to guard her a little jealously now, even from Dick. Cecily has given up dancing and most society, and society, noticing--ever on the _qui vive_ for these domestic interludes and their reactions on the people concerned in them--accepts the situation with a sigh and a smile and a touch of sentiment. Young Mrs. Harrison is going to have a baby--“so soon.” Well, opinion divides here.

Matthew hears of it among the casual gossip, through some chance remark about Dick, and goes to call on Cecily again, as if her interest were enhanced for him. Cecily receives him gladly, feeling that she is making a permanent friend and he is one of the few constant visitors at the gray-shingled house. Another is Madeline Von Vlectenburg, now Madeline Ensign, who has married a Carrington man and come to Carrington to live and whose acquaintance is still so small that she clings to Cecily’s companionship; and another is Fliss Horton, who has become very assiduous and helpful in bringing Cecily gayety and Madeline useful gossip. Fliss has the freedom of Cecily’s house now and treats Ellen with a charming, friendly informality and Ellen is always glad apparently to set an extra place for Miss Horton at her employer’s request.

Ellen knows about the baby too and will let Cecily do nothing for herself if she can help it. She has a tremendous maiden excitement about all the preparations and in secret is knitting a pink afghan. In secret--for she never refers to the coming event except by the most modestly veiled of allusions.

Yet, with all this light focused upon her, with all this care and tenderness surrounding her, Cecily withdrew into herself, more like her mother than she had ever been before. Her fears had lessened with the sense of enveloping support and knowledge and the many preparations normalized the months, but there grew in her a consciousness of isolation like nothing she had ever known before. It would come upon her sometimes in the midst of her friends, listening to the idle talk of Madeline and Fliss--sometimes when she was with Dick. It was not at all lonely or unpleasant--only a feeling of being set apart. She tried to explain it to Dick.

“It’s like recognizing suddenly that you are part of a design--it’s strangely impersonal.”

And again----

“But I’m not worried, Dick, dear. I’m interested and happy. Just because I’m silent now and then you mustn’t think I’m sad. I can’t help feeling responsible.”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever felt really responsible, you see. I’ve always been guided; people have always taken me all the way. Once in the convent when the priest told us about marriage I got awfully afraid. I suppose I sensed then that you had to go part of the way alone.”

“Yes, I know. You’re all with me and will be, but you can’t go all the way, darling. I don’t mind and I’m not afraid. I’ve something to go after, something to get.”

“Being born,” she told him, more whimsically, “must be a terrific process. Perhaps that’s why it’s fixed so that we can’t remember it at all.”

Those were the more sober moments, but there was on the whole more gayety than sobriety about the impending birth. Even Fliss, who held strong views on motherhood and had more than once remarked that she did not mean to be ever “tied down,” enjoyed looking at the beautiful baby clothes and the elaborate equipment which were showered upon Cecily, and they all talked about it a great deal with a gay frankness and humor utterly unrestrained by the presence of the men of the intimate circle.

At dinners, at which Cecily, dressed in some lovely loose robe, presided, Fliss naturally fell to Matthew and every one but Matthew himself fostered the pairing. Fliss, playing her game and hating her home background more every day, waited for something to come of all this. While she waited she played with Dick and it often happened that Matthew drifted to Cecily’s side while the others amused themselves. And Fliss made a confidant of Dick and asked his advice, thereby establishing a bond, for not only did Dick enjoy giving the advice, but he was naturally curious to see whether Fliss would take it and if she did take it, whether it would work out well and prove him wise.

Fliss asked him if he didn’t think she ought to go to work. That was her temporary line of conversation, but Dick didn’t know that. He pondered it seriously.

“At what?”

“I’ve had no training and of course I’m not clever. I suppose I’d have to take up stenography and go into some one’s office.”

“Surely you can find something better than that.”

“What? I can’t teach and I wouldn’t want to, anyway. And what else is there for a girl who doesn’t know anything about anything and whose only cleverness is in trimming hats?”

“Start a hat shop.”

“You need money for that, Dick.”

“You need money for everything. You’ll have to face that, unless you marry it.”

“That, too, has been suggested. But it’s not so easy to find some one with money whom you can marry.”

Dick’s eyes strayed to the other end of the room.

“How about Matthew?”

“Matthew hasn’t asked me.”

“Shall I tell him to ask you?” teased Dick.

“If you like. But he won’t--even though I wouldn’t marry him if he did. I want something a little different from Matthew.”

“A shade more jazz.”

“A shade more jazz is right!”

“Matthew is ruled out.”

Matthew turned to call to them. “Who is taking my name in vain?”

Fliss crossed the room negligently. “We were discussing,” she told him with her engaging impudence, “the possibility of your marrying me.”

“Am I going to do it?”

“No. Rest easy. I’ve refused you in advance.”

“Because you haven’t enough jazz,” contributed Dick.

“Reason enough. But I wonder why I haven’t more of that peculiar quality. Of course it’s always existed under a variety of names so I can’t say I didn’t happen along in the right generation. I never did have it. Perhaps because I had to go to work too young.”

“Well, I should have gone to work young, and I always had it,” said Fliss.

Cecily was following them amusedly. “And I never had to work at all and I haven’t it.”

“Convent training.”

“No, look at Madeline. She’s full of the same spirit Fliss is full of.”

“And Dick?”

“Dick’s a jazzer thrown into high company,” mocked Fliss.

“Dick’s a jazzer--reformed.” Dick put his arm about his wife’s shoulders and drew her close to him. “You’re all wrong. Jazzing or whatever you call it is purely a matter of age. When you draw near thirty you get over it, just as the average man gets over tennis.”

“But I’m not thirty.”

“No,” said Dick, looking down at her tenderly, “but you’ve other fish to fry. Besides you can’t be classified.”

“French model, one only.” Fliss could always be counted on to remain flippant. The others caught her note with amusement.

It was one of their many idle, undeveloped, cross-purposed conversations, which in spite of its lightness had a kind of function in bringing them nearer together, teaching them what to expect from each other, revealing their quality to each other. The weeks slipped along, each one important and interesting in its relation to the coming of Cecily’s child, bringing that great anticipation closer to them. And the lives of all of them clung to their own little orbits in the midst of a storm already world devastating, though there were many moments when they all shivered as some great tragedy, dulled by distance, came over the wires and through the papers to them. Cecily, of course, dated all things by the fifteenth of May, and as the winter changed into spring and the whole world opened happily under the warming sun, she was more and more eager to bring her waiting to a close. Dick was impatient, she knew, and that made her more so. She was catching some of Dick’s quality as she lived with him. She was trying to learn how to frost the depths of the spiritual isolation which was absorbing her with a surface companionship during hours which demanded lightness. There was some sacrifice in learning this new lightness, but she had a vague feeling that it would make Dick happy if she were not only happy, but gay.

The wonder of Cecily was that she was twenty, as yet unbigoted, and that her personality was still vague in its outlines. The convent was of course mainly responsible for this--in leaving so much to God. The implied educational method of most schools and colleges is that you have to work things out “on your own” as definitely as possible--work out God, too, when you get to it--but the convent method was not so. When things became tangled or overerudite, or too introspective, or embarrassing and indelicate, the gentle nuns turned the solutions over to God and left them there without asking for an accounting. Working with material like Cecily they took care to perfect her English and her French, even if they totally neglected economics, gave her a cultural knowledge of science and a knowledge of history, which was colored by faith in the church, and sent her out with a clean mind. There were plenty of fine fresh minds coming out of women’s colleges every day, but their freshness was like the antiseptic freshness of a laboratory after corruption has been studied and its traces scoured away; Cecily’s was the freshness of the out-of-doors, which is different. Mental and emotional qualities were still to develop and, stepping as she did into marriage so quickly, she had all of psychology, all of philosophy, to learn. The bag of women’s tricks, already so thoroughly ransacked by Fliss, was quite unknown to Cecily.

While Dick was teaching her love and some gayeties as well, she was learning other things. It was absurd to say that Matthew had set himself to the forming of her mind--what he did was too intangible for him to have had a definite purpose--but still, he did try to help Cecily to think. Undoubtedly it was at first for the pure pleasure of seeing the effect that much discussed themes would have upon a mind as inexperienced as hers that Matthew introduced many of his conversations. Her ready response led him further. He lent her books, catching up the broken thread of a conversation about some problem by sending her relevant printed thought; he stimulated her mind constantly. And the mind, which must have been a reproduction in part at least of Allgate Moore’s mind, the part which was responsible for the fact that people called him “genius,” began to grow. Such a year for Cecily! There were many nights when she sat listening to the men talking about the affairs which were absorbing almost all thinking people’s minds--the sinking of ships at sea, the slaughters of war, the advances and retreats of the hostile armies, the surmises as to new alliances--all of it deepening in Cecily her natural sense of the gravity of the world’s affairs and of the world’s dangers. Then when they stopped--and they would stop when her comments or queries became too intense, too worried--she always marveled at the way they, and Dick especially, could spring back to lightness of thought and word.

* * * * *

It was at Matthew’s suggestion that they went to Allenby. Allenby, as well as being Matthew’s surname, was the name given in his honor to a little village at the mouth of one of the mines in which Matthew had large interests. Dick had been offered the stock which one of the directors was relinquishing and expressed a curiosity to see the place. Matthew said he would drive him down if he would take a day off.

“I can’t leave Cecily very well,” said Dick.

“Bring Cecily.”

“Now?”

“It won’t hurt her. The roads are fine; state roads--no frost holes. We can get across to Judith for the night. There’s a very decent inn there where we could stop.”

“Yes, I know the place. I’ll ask Cecily. Maybe she’d like it.”

It was the second week in April. Mrs. Warner did not especially approve of the trip, but Cecily had set her heart on it.

“Well,” compromised her mother, “if they drive slowly it probably won’t hurt you. Don’t go down any mines. And it’s still cold; take plenty of rugs.”

To balance the party they had asked Fliss, though, as Fliss said, she was not sure whether she was chaperoning Cecily or Cecily her, and they started off early on a Saturday morning, Matthew and Dick proving that it was a business trip by sitting together in the front seat. Lunch from thermos bottles and a picnic basket hardly halted them and they reached Allenby in the middle of the afternoon.

It was, as Matthew said, hardly a village. There was a railway station and about it were grouped houses and cheap stores flanking the side of brief indefinite streets of rutted red clay. Its newness was ugly, but, looking at it, one knew its age would be worse. It had no possibility of growing to charm and dignity from such beginnings. It was a necessity--nothing more. Their comments as they looked at it were characteristic. Fliss had the first word.

“So this is where your money comes from.”

Matthew and Dick both laughed. “It’s quite a settlement, isn’t it?” said Dick. “I’d no idea the place was so big. You must have a thousand people in the village.”

“And more squatted around the mine itself. You’ll see later.” Matthew turned to Cecily. “What do you think of my namesake?”

“It seems a desolate place for people to live--a miserable place. I should think you could make it a little more attractive.”

“That’s not good sociology; that’s charity.”

They left their car at the railroad station and wandered about the village, Dick growing enthusiastic over things which seemed pathetic to Cecily, and Fliss amusing herself with comments and trying to dazzle the people she saw. She insisted that they should have a soda at the store and over that she was very merry and mocking. Matthew dragged them away.

“It gets dark early and we must see the mine yet.”

The road to the mine was rough and led through a waste of ugly fields, covered with discolored vegetation. It was growing colder and the dead bushes shook in the wind. The girls huddled themselves in rugs and began to think of dinner and the Inn. The mine was interesting, but----

Dick and Matthew, however, had grown absorbed by this time. They were deep in statistics; they looked interestedly and speculatively over the barren fields and with real admiration at a group of one story huts grouped together near the great red pit which was the mine.

“Some of the people have to live close for various reasons,” explained Matthew over his shoulder. “In case of a blizzard we have to keep a force fairly close. There are about a hundred men who live here. A few have their families, but most of them are unmarried and live in bunk houses.”

A number of children bore witness to the existence of the families. They were very dirty children--stolid little Scandinavians, most of them. The automobile awoke their interest. They measured its difference from the half-dozen begrimed Fords which were casually lined up on one side of the mine office.

“Want to go down, Fliss? Cecily mustn’t.”

“Love it,” said Fliss.

“We’ll just go down to the first level,” Matthew decided, “to give Fliss an idea. You must put on overalls though. Come in the office and they’ll fix you out. I’ve had lots of women here. It’s all right.”

Cecily watched them from the depths of the car as they disappeared over the edge of the mine, walking on a kind of circular path--Fliss looking like an extremely rakish boy in her overalls. Then she settled herself to wonder again how these people lived and how it was worth living without any beauty or any comfort--or love. She wondered if women loved these rough, unpleasant-looking men now emerging in little groups. They all went to the office. It was Saturday night and they were getting their pay. They stared at Cecily and the car, some stolidly, some hostile in their glances. Vaguely she wished Dick would come back.

Suddenly a man paused beside the car. He was obviously angry. She had seen him leave the office, slamming the door with an oath that carried to her ears, and as he came down the road and she knew he must pass the car, she felt his hostility even before he spoke. He did not shout, but he came to a pause and his voice was low and menacing and his face full of hate.

“Sit there, damn you, and grin. They fired me--and they’ll pay for it. You’ll all pay for it, you damned blood suckers. You----”

Then he called Cecily a name which she had never heard before, but which was utterly clear in its implication, even to her, and went swiftly down the road, lost in the increasing crowd of homegoing men. Cecily had gone dead white. She became conscious of crowds of men pouring past her now and she felt every face ferocious. She did not want to look at them and yet she could not help it. She felt suddenly that she was affronting them. This car, her furs, her luxury of robes, their shacks! And Dick did not come. Where was he? Why did he not come? Had they caught him and Matthew down in the mine? Had something happened? She tried to reassure herself, but her shocked mind went tearing on into confusion. Then in the midst of it came a pain, a tearing pain like nothing she had felt ever before. Dick, coming up beside Fliss and Matthew, all three laughing and talking to one of those men who had so terrified Cecily, saw his wife, white-faced--staring.

They were all immensely frightened and too inexperienced to be sure what steps were best to take. Even Cecily was not sure that her hour had really begun, but before they got back to the little village there was not much room for doubt. Dick and Matthew looked at each other in utter consternation. They were four hours away from all the elaborate preparations for the advent of Cecily’s child; they both had heard of accidents. The ride back home was not to be attempted, but here, in this forlorn little mining town----

In those first hours it was Cecily herself who took the initiative. In an interval between the pains she lifted her head from Dick’s shoulder with an actual smile.

“Apparently I’m going to spoil the party; and I can’t get back home. Find me a place to stay over night, Dick--the cleanest house there is. And telephone Dr. Wilson. In the meantime get hold of the doctor here.”

They did as she said. The little frame house of the mine superintendent was made ready and the superintendent’s wife, a Swedish woman of forty, after her first bewilderment took command of the situation and Cecily with stolid sympathy. Cecily, in a strange hummocky bed, wearing a coarse cotton flannel nightgown, soon lost the connection between reality and nightmares. Nothing was real about her--the face of the Swede woman with her guttural reassurances, the bearded man who they said was the doctor, but who seemed unable to relieve her torture--but through it all her mind pounded along on a steady track of fear and determination. She might lose her baby--she would not lose her baby--they must take care. She kept giving directions, pathetic directions, about that.

Matthew had found the doctor and after a look at Cecily he told them that they would have no time to send for their own physician. He did not seem much concerned about it all and was inclined to take it all very easily. He was a middle-aged man--Swedish also--with a blond beard and abstracted blue eyes.

“But,” said Dick, “there’s not even a nurse!”

The doctor smiled. “Fifty babies in six months in this village,” he said, “and no nurse for any of them. This lady (pointing to Fliss) and Mrs. Olson will help me--and you, if I need you.”

But it seemed none the less terrible. Matthew and Dick pooled their knowledge of such events. Fliss stayed by Cecily, remarkably calm, helping Mrs. Olson in her meager preparations, but white to her lips. And each half hour the cloud of pain and worry thickened over the little house. It was a cold night. Mrs. Olson had sent her children to a neighbor’s house. Dick and Matthew, in the kitchen, tried to conceal their fears.

“Why was I such a damned fool as to bring her?” cried Dick.

“I wish I hadn’t suggested it, but we did and we’re here. We’ll have to see it through, Dick. The chances are ninety to one that it will come out all right, old man.” But he, too, was white and his hand shook a little as he poked at the fire in the stove.

Fliss came in and stood leaning against the door. They jumped up. She gave them a few directions.

“Hunt through the drug store yourself,” she finished. “We must be sure the things are right. I’ll watch.”

“Do you think you can, Fliss?” Dick sounded doubtful and Fliss, leaning against the door, did not look too competent. Her skirt was too short and her hair too elaborate.

“I’ve got to,” she answered. “I don’t know much, but I’ve heard things--enough to know what to avoid.”

They had reached Carrington by telephone and knew that Cecily’s mother, Cecily’s nurse and Cecily’s doctor were now on their way to Allenby, but it would be three or four hours before they could arrive even with the greatest of speed. The local doctor had assured them that it would be over before that. The two men could hear strange sounds that did not seem natural--cries that hurt almost unbearably to hear. The footsteps overhead were hurried.

“Do you think--already?” asked Dick.

Then they both heard it.

* * * * *

Fliss came in again. Her hair was disordered and her face as pale as before. She faced them with startled, angry eyes.

“So that’s what women have to go through,” she said, “and you never get a taste of it! My Lord, but it’s fierce!”

Dick had pushed past her, upstairs. It seemed as if Matthew were about to follow, and restrained himself.

“Is something wrong?” he asked hoarsely. “Is she----”

Fliss actually laughed. All the primitive sex antagonism in her had seemed to leap out suddenly. She was angrily on guard, fiercely angry at all men, so free of this agony--quite at her best as she stood there in her wrath.

“Oh, no, nothing’s wrong. It’s bad enough when it’s right. Dick’s got his baby all right.”

She sat down at table with her face in her hands. Matthew’s face relaxed a little and he patted Fliss clumsily on the shoulders.

“You’re a brick, Fliss.”

She recovered herself quickly and looked up, brushing her hair back, her burst of anger seeming quite spent, a wan humor asserting itself.

“There was much the same situation when I was born,” she said reflectively. “Do you suppose that child will have the same sentiments towards me that I have towards Mrs. Ellis? I forgot to tell you--it’s a girl.”