The studio lamps made cheerful colors in the right places, and Cynthia feeling the world as far as she was concerned in her lap, in the shape of a baby boy, round and fair with undecided features, felt that life had brought its own rewards, richly, wonderfully. She was almost afraid, she was so happy, with the fear of those who have gone into the darkness, and dreamt only of the light. Leslie Damores was painting her again, but the face was different. It was called “Motherhood,” and it told of the great need satisfied. Muriel was coming in to see the picture. The studio door opened and a woman come into the room; she was little, and French, and beautifully dressed. She advanced towards Cynthia with a little cry; then she laughed.

“Why, Cynthia, you’ve got a baby! I told them to let me come right up. I was an old friend, and I just had to come. Oh, there’s your husband!” She turned with another rapid laugh towards Leslie. He was looking bravely at his wife, whose face was strained and anxious; the woman seemed evidently nervous too.

“Well, you’re very silent you two,” she cried defiantly.

“What do you want?” said Cynthia coldly. “I thought you had gone away.”

“And so I did, and I’ve come back. Clifton died, and I married again. Did you know it?—an American too—and he didn’t give me any peace till I promised to get Launcelot. We Americans seem to have such horrid consciences.”

“You never had, had you?” said Cynthia quietly. The woman looked angry, then she laughed.

“Well, I guess you’re about right—I never had much trouble that way; but when Sam Hicks wanted Launcelot I felt it would be right sweet to take him back with us to America, and I had the greatest time finding your address. You’re fixed up real genteel, Mr. Damores; I should think you must have made painting pay. And is that Cynthia’s picture? How perfectly lovely!”

“Mrs. Hicks,” said Cynthia slowly—“I think I understood you to say that was your husband’s name—when you let me take Launcelot three years ago I had no idea you would ever claim him again. He has just gone to school here in England. He is very happy——” Cynthia’s voice broke. “Oh, why do you want him again?” she cried—“it’s cruel.”

“I am going to have my boy,” said Mrs. Hicks raising her voice. “I tell you——”

“A moment,” Leslie Damores broke in. “You were last heard of running away with a French Count. Do you think you are a fit person to take care of a child?”

“Why, how dare you?” she cried, facing him with frightened rage; “I declare I never heard the like! I’ll have you up for libel, Mr. Leslie Damores; and, as for you, Mrs. Leslie Damores——”

“I am speaking for my wife, and you may speak to me,” said Leslie, “otherwise you leave the room.” Mrs. Hicks began to cry.

“And to think that I am respectably married and everything. But that’s what it is, a poor woman must always suffer for her mistakes, while as for you—you can have as many of them as you like, and you’re none the worse for them!” She stopped again; their silence checked her, she felt hushed by their quiet contempt; and yet, angrier than ever, “I’m the boy’s mother,” she said turning to Cynthia; “how would you like to have your child taken from you?” Cynthia looked helplessly at her husband; the woman had touched the right plea; she was the boy’s mother.

“You shall see Launcelot to-morrow, Mrs. Hicks,” said Leslie, “and by that time I shall have inquired into your case, and if your assertions are true as to your husband and his means of support we will consider the matter. Meanwhile there is nothing more to be said, and if you will allow me I will take you downstairs.”

Mrs. Hicks looked spitefully at Cynthia, but Leslie’s face checked her—the baby had begun to cry. She flung up her head and left the room. The baby had gone, and Cynthia was crying alone in the studio when he came back. He took her in his arms.

“Oh, Leslie,” she moaned, “he meant everything to us, dear little fellow. Do you remember he made me good again, and he found you for me? Leslie, I can’t let him go back to her. She left him so cruelly. He is mine, darling—tell me I needn’t let him go—he’s such a delicate little fellow. Oh, I can’t! I can’t!” He stroked her hair; she had never cried since her marriage.

“Dearest, we will leave it to him. She is his mother—we mustn’t forget that. She has some claim on him, after all.”

“You could threaten to tell her husband about—about the Count,” she whispered.

“Oh, no, no, no,” said Leslie gently.

“I didn’t mean it, dear—I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed afresh.

“I will go and bring Launcelot,” he said.

“Isn’t that baby crying?” It was not baby crying, but she turned and fled upstairs.

“After all,” said Leslie thoughtfully, “she’s not Launcelot’s mother.” Then he went out.

Muriel came in to find the studio empty of everything but the great picture of “Motherhood.” The woman holding Paradise in her arms stung her to the quick with her expression of ineffable content. She was not looking at the child in her arms. She was holding it too close to need the reassurance of a glance; she was looking across the child with all the loves in her eyes, steady and beautiful and bright, eyes too happy to smile. Muriel knew suddenly that it was the way Cynthia looked at her husband. She did not wish to see them then, so slowly she let the curtain down before the picture and crept softly out of the room. But the woman’s eyes followed her home, and when she was in the club and back in her room she saw them still. They seemed to have a quiet wonder in them that any woman could ever dream that there was any other happiness than that.

“Something is surely wrong when one begins to count up one’s blessings,” said Muriel. “My life is full—full of everything I want!” But as she looked defiantly in the glass she saw she had not got the woman’s look in her eyes.

Launcelot and Leslie walked hand in hand very solemnly home through the streets of London. Leslie had been trying to explain. Launcelot’s little face was very white, but he would not cry.

“Do you think—do you think I ought to leave you and Lady Beautiful and—and baby?” he asked wistfully.

“She is your mother, dear boy, and she wants you very much,” said Leslie reproaching himself for the coldness in his voice.

“And are mothers everything?”

“Mothers are a very great deal, old fellow. You see you belong to them—you’re their very own.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said the little fellow wearily. “Baby is Lady Beautiful’s very own, and so are you, but I’m not to be any more.” There was a quiver in his voice. Leslie pressed his little hand, he felt too much to speak. “My mother didn’t want me very much for her very own before, did she? You see she gave me to Lady Beautiful.”

“She wants you now,” said Damores hoarsely. They were very near home.

“I—I don’t think I want her very much, you know,” said Launcelot wistfully. “But they didn’t give me any choice, did they, when they made me belong to her?”

“I think they thought she needed you; you see she has no one else but a new husband,” Leslie explained.

“Then I must go,” said Launcelot as Leslie opened the door, “because you see a new husband can’t be much, and a boy who belongs to you must mean more, I should think.”

“I am quite sure that a boy who belongs to you means much more,” said Leslie kissing him.

So it was all settled before Launcelot ever saw Lady Beautiful. They looked a little nervously at each other as the door opened and they saw her sitting by the fire. She sprang up with a little sudden cry and her arms held out to him. He had been to school and knew that fellows never cry, but he had only just learnt it—and he forgot. Leslie watched them for a moment sobbing in each other’s arms. The tenderness and pity from her new rich store made her seem more wonderful than ever to him. His heart ached at their grief, but the woman’s assertions were true—the child must go. The inevitable had to him a consolation. He went and smoked hard in the studio. To Cynthia it was a cage, and she struggled in vain against the bars, crying over Launcelot as he slept at last, with troubled breathing from his late sobs. But when the baby cried she went to it again. The next morning Mrs. Hicks appeared. She was nervously anxious to please. She called Launcelot by all the affectionate names she could think of, but he only looked at her with half-frightened, wondering eyes.

“And now Launcelot will come with mother?” she asked at last. He looked wistfully back at Cynthia and her husband, his heart breaking. Parting with the baby had been gone through upstairs. He had cried till he could cry no more, so he only looked at them.

“I would rather belong to you, Lady Beautiful,” he whispered, as she put her arms about him, “much, much rather belong to you.”

She watched him walk with his mother down the street, her face pressed to the panes. When he reached the corner he turned and waved back to her. His mother gave his arm a little pull, and he did not turn again. It was the last time Cynthia ever saw him. He went out of her life as suddenly and strangely as he had entered it; but in the meantime the broken thread had been joined together again, the dreams she had resolutely crushed had blossomed in a garden of reality, and the great power of love had filled up what had been the emptiness and desolation of her soul.

“Now I have come to make my apologies, Miss Dallerton,” said the doctor in a cheery voice.

It was a cold day, and he looked aggressively warm and reassuring. He never needed to be made allowances for, and Muriel could never quite forgive him that. She had made so many allowances for Jack.

“I’m afraid you thought me a little short with you the other day—in fact, you were so displeased you had half a mind to walk through Stepney by yourself—now, hadn’t you?” he asked smiling.

“You were very rude to me the other day, Dr. Grant, and though you seem to take my forgiveness for granted, you have not yet given me any explanation.” The doctor laughed, but his eyes grew colder.

“Well!” he said, “so you won’t forgive me without?” Muriel frowned.

“If you have a reason I should like to hear it,” she suggested.

The doctor walked once or twice up and down the room. She watched him unwillingly; he had the most splendid shoulders; she did not think he could be more than thirty-six. Then he stopped before her chair and looked at her very gravely. He was so tall that she felt at a disadvantage; some instinct made her rise too, and they stood there face to face, their eyes doing battle. She looked away at last.

“Well?” she questioned. She was conscious that her breath was coming quickly, and she thanked Heaven she didn’t blush easily.

“I was short to you,” said the doctor deliberately, “because it seemed to me the only way of getting help from you. If I hadn’t made you thoroughly angry you would probably have fainted.”

“I should not have fainted,” she said, her eyes flashing fiercely. She knew she was not speaking the truth, but it was too desperately difficult. If she submitted in one thing, where would they stop? She was beginning to lose her self-control and her sense of proportion at the same time. It is dangerous for a man to lose both, but it is fatal to a woman to lose either.

“There was another reason,” said the doctor slowly. Muriel was silent. “Do you want to hear it?”

“If——” she began icily. “Yes, I may as well hear it,” she finished in confusion. She did not want him to think she cared enough to be angry.

“I love you!” he said with the same quiet deliberation and a pause between each word, “and it was a little difficult to let you help in any other way.”

The room grew suddenly tense; each breath was a terrible sword which shook the universe; there seemed an awful conspiracy in the room to win some concession; the very chairs and table seemed to wait and listen. A hand-organ in the street clanged them back into facts again. The doctor, still looking at her, picked up a paper-knife; Muriel sank back into the chair. There seemed nothing left in the world to say, but she felt as if there might be if he would only keep still a moment.

“I am very sorry,” she said at last, and then she could have bitten her tongue out, it sounded so commonplace. She noticed that he was looking suddenly very tired, but he smiled with grave eyes.

“I knew you would be,” he said, “and I must go and make some calls. But you do understand now, don’t you?”

“I suppose I do,” said Muriel; “but are you going away?” He almost laughed at her thoughtlessness.

“Well! yes, Miss Dallerton,” he said; “I think I must go now.”

Muriel rose to her feet, and a great wave of desolation swept over her. She stood there alone, and before her eyes passed the vision of those who had left her—Alec—Jack—Cynthia—her uncle. All with their different lives, their different circles. And now he was going, the friend who had made life and her work, her youth and her beauty so excellently well worth while—with whom she had argued, quarrelled and discussed—and he was leaving her. All of a sudden she knew she could not bear it—that she, too, needed help and comfort and sympathy—that though one may give all and prosper, yet it is blessed to receive as well. And then he looked so tired. He was waiting for her to dismiss him, and he could not understand why she was keeping him.

“I don’t want you to go,” said Muriel at last. “I’m sure I need you more—more than the other patients, only you must learn to ask questions and not to make assertions only if you want me to be a satisfactory case!”

“What made you say that you were sorry?” he asked her after a long, wonderful pause.

“I was sorry,” she laughed at him, “that you didn’t tell me so before!”

When Jack heard of her marriage he shrugged his shoulders. “I always thought she would run amôk on some sort of a professional chap, but I rather thought it would be a parson,” he said, and thought how much better she might have done for herself if she had only known when she had a good thing.

“I thought she was cut out for an old maid,” Edith le Mentier told her friends; “but those sort of women generally marry and have fourteen children.”

It mattered very little to Muriel what was said. She looked at things now with the eyes of the woman in Damores’ picture; and she and Geoff having found so much for themselves were the more anxious to give their sunshine to the world. They believed that the purposes of love, in human and material things, were the channels through which the spirit finds soaring room—never apart from earth, but ever nearer heaven.

Their one need left was to join the gospel of example, which is simply loving everything for love’s sake, whether it visibly love back or no. To acquaintances they seemed to have positively left the world, but they themselves knew that they had found the true one.

Transcriber’s Notes:

A few obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public domain.

[End of Life, the Interpreter by Phyllis Bottome]