"And leave the children, Jinny?"
"Of course I've told him that I can't, but he's asked me two or three times to let you look after them for a day or two."
"I'd love to do it, darling – but you've never spent a night away from one of them since Lucy was born, have you?"
"No, and I'd be perfectly miserable – only I can't make Oliver understand it. Of course, they'd be just as safe with you as with me, but I'd keep imagining every minute that something had happened."
"I know exactly how you feel, dear. I never spent a night outside my home after my first child came until you grew up. I don't see how any true woman could bear to do it, unless, of course, she was called away because of a serious illness."
"If Oliver were ill, or you, or father, I'd go in a minute unless one of the children was really sick – but just to see a play is different, and I'd feel as if I were neglecting my duty. The funny part is that Oliver is so wrapped up in this play that he doesn't seem to be able to get his mind off it, poor darling. Father was never that way about his sermons, was he?"
"Your father never thought of himself or of his own interests enough, Jinny. If he ever had a fault, it was that. But I suppose he approaches perfection as nearly as a man ever did."
Slipping the darning gourd into the toe of one of Lucy's little white stockings, Virginia gazed attentively at a small round hole while she held her needle arrested slightly above it. So exquisitely Madonna-like was the poise of her head and the dreaming, prophetic mystery in her face, that Mrs. Pendleton waited almost breathlessly for her words.
"There's not a single thing that I would change in Oliver, if I could," she said at last.
"It is so beautiful that you feel that way, darling. I suppose all happily married women do."
A week later, across Harry's birthday cake, which stood surrounded by four candles in the centre of the rectory table, Virginia offered her cheerful explanation of Oliver's absence, in reply to a mild inquiry from the rector. "He was obliged to go to New York yesterday about the rehearsal of 'The Beaten Road,' father. We were both so sorry he couldn't be here to-day, but it was impossible for him to wait over."
"It's a pity," said the rector gently. "Harry will never be just four years old again, will you, little man?" Even the substantial fact that Oliver's play would, it was hoped, provide a financial support for his children, did not suffice to lift it from the region of the unimportant in the mind of his father-in-law.
"But he'll have plenty of other birthdays when papa will be here," remarked Virginia brightly. Though she had been a little hurt to find that Oliver had arranged to leave home the night before, and that he had appeared perfectly blind to the importance of his presence at Harry's celebration, her native good sense had not permitted her to make a grievance out of the matter. On her wedding day she had resolved that she would not be exacting of Oliver's time or attention, and the sweetness of her disposition had smoothed away any difficulties which had intervened between her and her ideal of wifehood. From the first, love had meant to her the opportunity of giving rather than the privilege of receiving, and her failure to regard herself as of supreme consequence in any situation had protected her from the minor troubles and disillusionments of marriage.
"It is too bad to think that dear Oliver will have to be away for two whole weeks," said Mrs. Pendleton.
"Is he obliged to stay that long?" asked the rector, sympathetically. Never having missed an anniversary since the war, he could look upon Oliver's absence as a fit subject for condolence.
"He can't possibly come home until the play is produced, and that won't be for two weeks yet," replied Virginia.
"But I thought it rested with the actors now. Couldn't they go on just as well without him?"
"He thinks not, and, of course, it is such a great play that he doesn't want to take any risks with it."
"Of course he doesn't," assented Mrs. Pendleton, who had believed that the stage was immoral until Virginia's husband began to write for it.
"I know he'll come back the very first minute that he can get away," said Virginia with conviction, before she stooped to comfort Harry, who was depressed by the discovery that he was not expected to eat his entire cake, but instantly hopeful when he was promised a slice of sister Lucy's in the summer.
Late in the afternoon, when the children, warmly wrapped in extra shawls by Mrs. Pendleton, were led back through the cold to the house in Prince Street, one and all of the party agreed that it was the nicest birthday that had ever been. "I like grandma's cake better than our cake," announced Harry above his white muffler. "Why can't we have cake like that, mamma?"
He was trotting sturdily, with his hand in Virginia's, behind the perambulator, which contained a much muffled Jenny, and at his words Mrs. Pendleton, who walked a little ahead, turned suddenly and hugged him tight for an instant.
"Just listen to the darling boy!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice.
"Because nobody else can make such good cake as grandma's," answered Virginia, quite as pleased as her mother. "And she's going to give you one every birthday as long as you live."
"Can't I have another birthday soon, mamma?"
"Not till after sister Lucy's. You want sister Lucy to have one, don't you? and dear little Jenny?"
"But why can't I have a cake without a birthday, mamma?"
"You may, precious, and grandma will make you one," said Mrs. Pendleton, as she helped Marthy wheel the perambulator over the slippery crossing and into the front gate.
On the hall table there was a telegram from Oliver, and Virginia tore it open while her mother and Marthy unfastened the children's wraps.
"He's at the Hotel Bertram," she said joyously, "and he says the rehearsals are going splendidly."
"Did he mention Harry's birthday?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, trying to hide the instinctive dread which the sight of a telegram aroused in her.
"He must have forgotten it. Can't you come upstairs to the nursery with us, mother?"
"No, your father is all alone. I must be getting back," replied Mrs. Pendleton gently.
An hour or two later, when Virginia sat in her rocking-chair before the nursery fire, with Harry, worn out with his play and forgetful of the dignity of his four years, asleep in her lap, she opened the telegram again and reread it hungrily while the light of love shone in her face. She knew intuitively that Oliver had sent the telegram because he had not written – and would not write, probably, until he had finished with the hardest work of his play. It was an easy thing to do – it took considerably less of his time than a letter would have done; but she had inherited from her mother the sentimental vision of life which unconsciously magnifies the meaning of trivial attentions. She looked through her emotions as through a prism on the simple fact of his telegraphing, and it became immediately transfigured. How dear it was of him to realize that she would be anxious until she heard from him! How lonely he must be all by himself in that great city! How much he must have wanted to be with Harry on his birthday! Sitting there in the fire-lit nursery, her heart sent out waves of love and sympathy to him across the distance and the twilight. On the rug at her feet Lucy rocked in her little chair, crooning to her doll with the beginnings of the mother instinct already softening her voice, and in the adjoining room Jenny lay asleep in her crib while the faithful Marthy watched by her side. Beyond the window a fine icy rain had begun to fall, and down the long street she could see the lamps flickering in revolving circles of frost. In the midst of the frozen streets, that little centre of red firelight separated her as completely from the other twenty-one thousand human beings among whom she lived as did the glow of personal joy that suffused her thoughts. From the dusk below she heard the tapping of a blind beggar's stick on the pavement, and the sound made, while it lasted, a plaintive accompaniment to the lullaby she was singing. "Two whole weeks," she thought, while her longing reached out to that unknown room in which she pictured Oliver sitting alone. "Two whole weeks. How hard it will be for him." In her guarded ignorance of the world she could not imagine that Oliver was suffering less from this enforced absence from all he loved than she herself would have suffered had she been in his place. Of course, men were different from women – that ancient dogma was embodied in the leading clause of her creed of life; but she had always understood that this difference vanished in some miraculous way after marriage. She knew that Oliver had to work, of course – how otherwise could he support his family? – but the idea that his work might ever usurp the place in his heart that belonged to her and the children would have been utterly incomprehensible to her had she ever thought of it. Jealousy was an alien weed, which could not take root in the benign soil of her nature.
For a week there was no letter from Oliver, and at the end of that time a few lines scrawled on a sheet of hotel paper explained that he spent every minute of his time at the theatre.
"Poor fellow, it's dreadfully hard on him, isn't it?" Virginia said to her mother, when she showed her the imposing picture of the hotel at the head of his letter.
There was no hint of compassion for herself in her voice. Her pity was entirely for Oliver, constrained to be away for two whole weeks from his children, who grew more interesting and delightful every day that they lived. "Harry has gone into the first reader," she added, turning from the storeroom shelves on which she was laying strips of white oilcloth. "He will be able to read his lesson to Oliver when he comes home."
"I have always understood that your father could read his Bible at the age of four," remarked Mrs. Pendleton, who passionately treasured this solitary proof of the rector's brilliancy.
"I am afraid Harry is backward. He hates his letters – especially the letter A – so much that it takes me an hour sometimes to get him to say it after me. My only comfort is that Oliver says he couldn't read a line until he was over seven years old. Would you scallop this oilcloth, mother, or leave it plain?"
"I always scallop mine. Mrs. Treadwell must be better, Jinny; Susan sent me a dessert yesterday."
"Yes, but she will never be able to move herself. Do you think that poor Susan will marry John Henry now?"
"I wonder?" replied Mrs. Pendleton vaguely. Then the sound of Harry's laughter floated in suddenly from the backyard, and her eyes, following Virginia's, turned automatically to the pantry window.
"They've come home for a snack, I suppose?" she said. "Shall I fix some bread and preserves for them?"
"Oh, I'll do it," responded Virginia, while she reached for the crock of blackberry jam on the shelf at her side.
Another week passed and there was no word from Oliver, until Mrs. Pendleton came in at dusk one evening, with an anxious look on her face and a folded newspaper held tightly in her hand.
"Have you seen any of the accounts of Oliver's play, Jinny?" she asked.
"No, I haven't had time to look at the papers to-day – Harry has hurt his foot."
She spoke placidly, looking up from the nursery floor, where she knelt beside a basin of warm water at Harry's feet. "Poor little fellow, he fell on a pile of bricks," she added, "but he's such a hero he never even whimpered, did he, darling?"
"But it hurt bad," said Harry eagerly.
"Of course, it hurt dreadfully, and if he hadn't been a man he would have cried."
"Sister would have cried," exulted the hero.
"Indeed, sister would have cried. Sister is a girl," responded Virginia, smothering him with kisses over the basin of water.
But Mrs. Pendleton refused to be diverted from her purpose even by the heroism of her grandson.
"John Henry found this in a New York paper and brought it to me. He thought you ought to see it, though, of course, it may not be so serious as it sounds."
"Serious?" repeated Virginia, letting the soapy washrag fall back into the basin while she stretched out her moist and reddened hand for the paper.
"It says that the play didn't go very well," pursued her mother guardedly. "They expect to take it off at once, and – and Oliver is not well – he is ill in the hotel – "
"Ill?" cried Virginia, and as she rose to her feet the basin upset and deluged Harry's shoes and the rug on which she had been kneeling. Her mind, unable to grasp the significance of a theatrical failure, had seized upon the one salient fact which concerned her. Plays might succeed or fail, and it made little difference, but illness was another matter – illness was something definite and material. Illness could neither be talked away by religion nor denied by philosophy. It had its place in her mind not with the shadow, but with the substance of things. It was the one sinister force which had always dominated her, even when it was absent, by the sheer terror it aroused in her thoughts.
"Let me see," she said chokingly. "No, I can't read it – tell me."
"It only says that the play was a failure – nobody understood it, and a great many people said it was – oh, Virginia —immoral!– There's something about its being foreign and an attack on American ideals – and then they add that the author refused to be interviewed and they understood that he was ill in his room at the Bertram."
The charge of immorality, which would have crushed Virginia at another time, and which, even in the intense excitement of the moment, had been an added stab to Mrs. Pendleton, was brushed aside as if it were the pestiferous attack of an insect.
"I am going to him now – at once – when does the train leave, mother?"
"But, Jinny, how can you? You have never been to New York. You wouldn't know where to go."
"But he is ill. Nothing on earth is going to keep me away from him. Will you please wipe Harry's feet while I try to get on my clothes?"
"But, Jinny, the children?"
"You and Marthy must look after the children. Of course I can't take them with me. Oh, Harry, won't you please hush and let poor mamma dress? She is almost distracted."
Something – a secret force of character which even her mother had not suspected that she possessed – had arisen in an instant and dominated the situation. She was no longer the gentle and doting mother of a minute ago, but a creature of a fixed purpose and an iron resolution. Even her face appeared to lose its soft contour and hardened until Mrs. Pendleton grew almost frightened. Never had she imagined that Virginia could look like this.
"I am sure there is some mistake about it. Don't take it so terribly to heart, Jinny," she pleaded, while she knelt down, cowed and obedient, to wipe Harry's feet.
Virginia, who had already torn off her house dress, and was hurriedly buttoning the navy blue waist in which she had travelled, looked at her calmly without pausing for an instant in her task.
"Will you bind up his foot with some arnica?" she asked. "There's an old handkerchief in my work basket. I want you and father to come here and stay until I get back. It will be less trouble than moving all their things over to the rectory."
"Very well, darling," replied Mrs. Pendleton meekly. "We'll do everything that we can, of course," and she added timidly, "Have you money enough?"
"I have thirty dollars. I just got it out of the bank to-day to pay Marthy and my housekeeping bills. Do you think that will be as much as I'll need?"
"I should think so, dear. Of course, if you find you want more, you can telegraph your father."
"The train doesn't leave for two hours, so I'll have plenty of time to get ready. It's just half-past six now, and Oliver didn't leave the house till eight o'clock."
"Won't you take a little something to eat before you go?"
"I couldn't swallow a morsel, but I'll sit with you and the children as soon as I've put the things in my satchel. I couldn't possibly need but this one dress, could I? If Oliver isn't really ill, I hope we can start home to-morrow. That will be two nights that I'll spend away. Oh, mother, ask father to pray that he won't be ill."
Her voice broke, but she fiercely bit back the sob before it escaped her lips.
"I will, dear, I promise you. We will both think of you and pray for you every minute. Jinny, are you sure it's wise? Couldn't we send some one – John Henry would go, I know – in your place?"
A spasm of irritation contracted Virginia's features. "Please don't, mother," she begged, "it just worries me. Whatever happens, I am going." Then she sobbed outright. "He wanted me to go with him at first, and I wouldn't because I thought it was my duty to stay at home with the children. If anything should happen to him, I'd never forgive myself."
She was slipping her black cloth skirt over her head as she spoke, and her terror-stricken face disappeared under the pleats before Mrs. Pendleton could turn to look at her. When her head emerged again above the belt of her skirt, the expression of her features had grown more natural.
"You'll go down in a carriage, won't you?" inquired her mother, whose mind achieved that perfect mixture of the sentimental and the practical which is rarely found in any except Southern women.
"I suppose I'll have to. Then I can take my satchel with me, and that will save trouble. You won't forget, mother, that I give Lucy a teaspoonful of cod-liver oil after each meal, will you? She has had that hacking cough for three weeks, and I want to break it up."
"I'll remember, Jinny, but I'm so miserable about your going alone."
Turning to the closet, Virginia unearthed an old black satchel from beneath a pile of toys, and began dusting it inside with a towel. Then she took out some underclothes from a bureau drawer and a few toilet articles, which she wrapped in pieces of tissue paper. Her movements were so methodical that the nervousness in Mrs. Pendleton's mind slowly gave way to astonishment. For the first time in her life, perhaps, the mother realized that her daughter was no longer a child, but a woman, and a woman whose character was as strong and as determined as her own. Vaguely she understood, without analyzing the motives that moved Virginia, that this strength and this determination which so impressed her had arisen from those deep places in her daughter's soul where emotion and not thought had its source. Love was guiding her now as surely as it had guided her when she had refused to go with Oliver to New York, or when, but a few minutes ago, she had knelt down to wash and bandage Harry's little earth-stained feet. It was the only power to which she would ever surrender. No other principle would ever direct or control her.
Marthy, who appeared with Jenny's supper, was sent out to order the carriage and to bear a message to the rector, and Virginia took the little girl in her lap and began to crumble the bread into the bowl of milk.
"Wouldn't you like me to do that, dear?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, with a submission in her tone which she had never used before except to the rector. "Don't you want to fix your hair over?"
"Oh, no, I'll keep on my hat till I go to bed, so it doesn't matter. I'd rather you'd finish my packing if you don't mind. There's nothing more to go in except some collars and my bedroom slippers and that red wrapper hanging behind the door in the closet."
"Are you going to take any medicine?"
"Only that bottle of camphor and some mustard plasters. Yes, you'd better put in the brandy flask and the aromatic ammonia. You can never tell when you will need them. Now, my darlings, mother is going away and you must keep well and be as good as gold until she comes back."
To the amazement of Mrs. Pendleton (who reflected that you really never knew what to expect of children), this appeal produced an immediate and extraordinary result. Lucy, who had been fidgeting about and trying to help with the packing, became suddenly solemn and dignified, while an ennobling excitement mounted to Harry's face. Never particularly obedient before, they became, as soon as the words were uttered, as amenable as angels. Even Jenny stopped feeding long enough to raise herself and pat her mother's cheek with ten caressing, milky fingers.
"Mother's going away," said Lucy in a solemn voice, and a hush fell on the three of them.
"And grandma's coming here to live," added Harry after the silence had grown so depressing that Virginia had started to cry.
"Not to live, precious," corrected Mrs. Pendleton quickly. "Just to spend two days with you. Mother will be home in two days."
"Mother will be home in two days," repeated Lucy. "May I stay away from school while you're away, mamma?"
"And may I stop learning my letters?" asked Harry.
"No, darlings, you must do just as if I were here. Grandma will take care of you. Now promise me that you will be good."
They promised obediently, awed to submission by the stupendous importance of the change. It is probable that they would have observed with less surprise any miraculous upheaval in the orderly phenomena of nature.
"I don't see how I can possibly leave them – they are so good, and they behave exactly as if they realized how anxious I am," wept Virginia, breaking down when Marthy came to announce that the rector had come and the carriage was at the door.
"Suppose you give it up, Jinny. I – I'll send your father," pleaded Mrs. Pendleton, in desperation as she watched the tragedy of the parting.
But that strange force which the situation had developed in Virginia yielded neither to her mother's prayers nor to the last despairing wails of the children, who realized, at the sight of the black bag in Marthy's hands, that their providence was actually deserting them. The deepest of her instincts – the instinct that was at the root of all her mother love – was threatened, and she rose to battle. The thing she loved best, she had learned, was neither husband nor child, but the one that needed her.