Frank had brought home the Life of Carlyle, and Maude had been dipping into it in the few spare half-hours which the many duties of a young housekeeper left her.  At first it struck her as dry, but from the moment that she understood that this was, among other things, an account of the inner life of a husband and a wife, she became keenly interested, and a passionate and unreasonable partisan.  For Frederick and Cromwell and the other great issues her feelings were tolerant but lukewarm.  But the great sex-questions of ‘How did he treat her?’ and of ‘How did she stand it?’ filled her with that eternal and personal interest with which they affect every woman.  Her gentle nature seldom disliked any one, but certainly amongst those whom she liked least, the gaunt figure of the Chelsea sage began to bulk largely.  One night, as Frank sat reading in front of the fire, he suddenly found his wife on her knees upon the rug, and a pair of beseeching eyes upon his face.

‘Frank, dear, I want you to make me a promise.’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Will you grant it?’

‘How can I tell you when I have not heard it?’

‘How horrid you are, Frank!  A year ago you would have promised first and asked afterwards.’

‘But I am a shrewd old married man now.  Well, let me hear it.’

‘I want you to promise me that you will never be a Carlyle.’

‘No, no, never.’

‘Really?’

‘Really and truly.’

‘You swear it?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘O Frank, you can’t think what a relief that is to me.  That dear, good, helpful, little lady—it really made me cry this morning when I thought how she had been used.’

‘How, then?’

‘I have been reading that green-covered book of yours, and he seemed so cold and so sarcastic and so unsympathetic.  He never seemed to appreciate all that she did for him.  He had no thought for her.  He lived in his books and never in her—such a harsh, cruel man!’

Frank went upstairs, and returned with a volume in his hand.

‘When you have finished the ‘Life,’ you must read this, dear.’

‘What is it?’

‘It is her letters.  They were arranged for publication after her death, while her husband was still alive.  You know that—’

‘Please take it for granted, darling, that I know nothing.  It is so jolly to have some one before whom it is not necessary to keep up appearances.  Now, begin at the beginning and go ahead.’  She pillowed her head luxuriously against his knees.

‘There’s nothing to tell—or very little.  As you say, they had their troubles in life.  The lady could take particularly good care of herself, I believe.  She had a tongue like a lancet when she chose to use it.  He, poor chap, was all liver and nerves, porridge-poisoned in his youth.  No children to take the angles off them.  Half a dozen little buffer states would have kept them at peace.  However, to hark back to what I was about to say, he outlived her by fifteen years or so.  During that time he collected these letters, and he has annotated them.  You can read those notes here, and the man who wrote those notes loved his wife and cherished her memory, if ever a man did upon earth.’

The graceful head beside his knee shook impatiently.

‘What is the use of that to the poor dead woman?  Why could not he show his love by kindness and thought for her while she was alive?’

‘I tell you, Maude, there were two sides to that.  Don’t be so prejudiced!  And remember that no one has ever blamed Carlyle as bitterly as he has blamed himself.  I could read you bits of these notes—’

‘Well, do.’

‘Here’s the first letter, in which she is talking about how they first moved into the house at Cheyne Row.  They spent their early years in Scotland, you know, and he was a man going on to the forties when he came to London.  The success of Sartor Resartus encouraged them to the step.  Her letter describes all the incoming.  Here is his comment, written after her death: “In about a week all was swept and garnished, fairly habitable; and continued incessantly to get itself polished, civilised, and beautified to a degree that surprised one.  I have elsewhere alluded to all that, and to my little Jeannie’s conduct of it; heroic, lovely, pathetic, mournfully beautiful as in the light of Eternity that little scene of time now looks to me.  From birth upwards she had lived in opulence, and now became poor for me—so nobly poor.  No such house for beautiful thrift, quiet, spontaneous, nay, as it were, unconscious minimum of money reconciled to human comfort and human dignity, have I anywhere looked upon where I have been.”  Now, Maude, did that man appreciate his wife?’

But the obstinate head still shook.

‘Words, words,’ said she.

‘Yes, but words with the ring of truth in them.  Can’t you tell real feeling from sham?  I don’t believe women can, or they would not be so often taken in.  Here’s the heading of the next letter: “Mournfully beautiful is this letter to me, a clear little household light shining pure and brilliant in the dark obstructive places of the past”—a little later comes the note: “Oh my poor little woman—become poor for me.”’

‘I like to hear him talk like that.  Yes, I do like him better after what you have said, Frank.’

‘You must remember two things about him, Maude.  The first, that he was a Scotchman, who are of all men the least likely to wear their hearts upon their sleeves; the other, that his mind was always grappling with some far-away subject which made him forget the smaller things close by him.’

‘But the smaller things are everything to a woman,’ said Maude.  ‘If ever you forget those smaller things, sir, to be as courteous to your wife as you would be to any other lady, to be loving and thoughtful and sympathetic, it will be no consolation to me to know that you have written the grandest book that ever was.  I should just hate that book, and I believe that in her inmost heart this poor lady hated all the books that had taken her husband away from her.  I wonder if their house is still standing.’

‘Certainly it is.  Would you like to visit it?’

‘I don’t think there is anything I should like more.’

‘Why, Maude, we are getting quite a distinguished circle of acquaintances.  Mr. Pepys last month—and now the Carlyles.  Well, we could not spend a Saturday afternoon better, so if you will meet me to-morrow at Charing Cross, we shall have a cosy little lunch together at Gatti’s, and then go down to Chelsea.’

Maude was a rigid economist, and so was Frank in his way, for with the grand self-respect of the middle classes the thought of debt was unendurable to them.  A cab in preference to a ’bus gave both of them a feeling of dissipation, but none the less they treated themselves to one on the occasion of this, their little holiday.  It is a delightful thing to snuggle up in, is a hansom; but in order to be really trim and comfortable one has to put one’s arm round one’s companion’s waist.  No one can observe it there, for the vehicle is built upon intelligent principles.  The cabman, it is true, can overlook you through a hole in the roof.  This cabman did so, and chuckled in his cravat.  ‘If that cove’s wife could see him—huddup, then!’ said the cabman.

He was an intelligent cabman too, for having heard Frank say ‘Thomas Carlyle’s house’ after giving the address 5 Cheyne Row, he pulled up on the Thames Embankment.  Right ahead of them was Chelsea Bridge, seen through a dim, soft London haze—monstrous, Cyclopean, giant arches springing over a vague river of molten metal, the whole daintily blurred, as though out of focus.  The glamour of the London haze, what is there upon earth so beautiful?  But it was not to admire it that the cabman had halted.

‘I beg your pardin’, sir,’ said he, in the softly insinuating way of the Cockney, ‘but I thought that maybe the lidy would like to see Mr. Carlyle’s statue.  That’s ’im, sir, a-sittin’ in the overcoat with the book in ’is ’and.’

Frank and Maude got out and entered the small railed garden, in the centre of which the pedestal rose.  It was very simple and plain—an old man in a dressing-gown, with homely wornout boots, a book upon his knee, his eyes and thoughts far away.  No more simple statue in all London, but human to a surprising degree.  They stood for five minutes and stared at it.

‘Well,’ said Frank at last, ‘small as it is, I think it is worthy of the man.’

‘It is so natural.’

‘You can see him think.  By Jove, it is splendid!’  Frank had enough of the true artist to be able to feel that rush of enthusiasm which adequate work should cause.  That old man, with his head shamefully defiled by birds, was a positive joy to him.  Among the soulless, pompous, unspeakable London statues, here at last there was one over which it is pleasant to linger.

‘What other one is there?’

‘Gordon in Trafalgar Square.’

‘Well, Gordon, perhaps.  But our Nelsons and Napiers and Havelocks—to think that we could do no better than that for them!  Now, dear, we have seen the man—let us look at the house!’

It had evidently been an old-fashioned building when first they came to it.  1708 was the date at the corner of the street.  Six or seven drab-coloured, flat-chested, dim-windowed houses stood in a line—theirs wedged in the middle of them.  A poor medallion with a profile head of him had been clumsily let into the wall.  Several worn steps led to the thin high door with an old-fashioned fanlight above it.  Frank rang the bell, and a buxom cheerful matron came at the call.

‘Names in this book, sir—and address, if you please,’ said the cheery matron.  ‘One shilling each—thank you, sir.  First door to the left, sir!  This was the dining-room, sir—’

But Frank had come to a dead stop in the dim, dull, wood-panelled hall.  In front of them rose the stairs with old-fashioned banisters, cracked, warped, and dusty.

‘It’s awful to think of, Maude—awful!  To think that she ran up those stairs as a youngish woman—that he took them two at a time as an active man, and then that they hobbled and limped down them, old and weary and broken, and now both dead and gone for ever, and the stairs standing, the very rails, the very treads—I don’t know that I ever felt so strongly what bubbles of the air we are, so fragile, so utterly dissolved when the prick comes.’

‘How could they be happy in such a house?’ said Maude.  ‘I can feel that there have been sorrow and trouble here.  There is an atmosphere of gloom.’

The matron-attendant approved of emotion, but in its due order.  One should be affected in the dining-room first, and then in the hall.  And so at her summons they followed her into the long, low, quaint room in which this curious couple had lived their everyday life.  Little of the furniture was left, and the walls were lined with collected pictures bearing upon the life of the Carlyles.

‘There’s the fireplace that he smoked his pipe up,’ said Frank.

‘Why up the fireplace?’

‘She did not like the smell in the room.  He often at night took his friends down into the kitchen.’

‘Fancy my driving you into the kitchen.’

‘Well, the habit of smoking was looked upon much less charitably at that time.’

‘And besides, he smoked clay pipes,’ said the matron.  ‘This is considered a good print of Mrs. Carlyle.’

It was a peaky eager face, with a great spirit looking out of it, and possibilities of passion both for good and evil in the keen, alert features.  Just beside her was the dour, grim outline of her husband.  Their life-histories were in those two portraits.

‘Poor dear!’ said Maude.

‘Ay, you may say so,’ said the matron, whose accent showed that she was from the north of the Tweed.  ‘He was gey ill to live wi’.  His own mither said so.  Now, what think you that room was for?’

It was little larger than a cupboard, without window or skylight, opening out of the end of the dining-room.

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘Well, sir, it was the powdering-room in the days when folk wore wigs.  The powder made such a mess that they just had a room for nothing else.  There was a hole in the door, and the man put his head through the hole, and the barber on the other side powdered him out of the flour-dredger.’

It was curious to be brought back in this fashion to those far-off days, and to suddenly realise how many other people had played their tragi-comedies within these walls.  Wigs!  Only the dressy people wore wigs.  So people of fashion in the days of the early Georges trod these same rooms where Carlyle grumbled and his wife fretted.  And they too had grumbled and fretted—or worse perhaps.  It was a ghostly old house.

‘This,’ said the matron, when they had passed up the stair, ‘used to be the drawing-room.  That’s their sofa.’

‘Not the sofa,’ said Frank.

‘Yes, sir, the sofa that is mentioned in the letters.’

‘She was so proud of it, Maude.  Gave eighteen shillings for it, and covered and stuffed it herself.  And that, I suppose, is the screen.  She was a great housekeeper—brought up a spoiled child, according to her own account, but a great housekeeper all the same.  What’s that writing in the case?’

‘It is the history that he was at work on when he died—something about the kings of Norway, sir.  Those are his corrections in blue.’

‘I can’t read them.’

‘No more could any one else, sir.  Perhaps that’s why the book has never been published.  Those are the portraits of the kings of Prussia, about whom he wrote a book.’

Frank looked with interest at the old engravings, one of the schoolmaster face of the great Frederick, the other of the frog-like features of Frederick William, the half-mad recruiter of the big Potsdam grenadiers.  When he had finished, the matron had gone down to open the door, and they were alone.  Maude’s hand grasped his.

‘Is it not strange, dear?’ she said.  ‘Here they lived, the most talented couple in the world, and yet with all their wisdom they missed what we have got—what perhaps that good woman who showed us round has got—the only thing, as it seems to me, that is really worth living for.  What are all the wit and all the learning and all the insight into things compared to love.’

‘By Jove, little woman, in all this house of wise sayings, no wiser or deeper saying has been said than that.  Well, thank God, we have that anyhow!’  And he kissed his wife, while six grand electors of Brandenburg and kings of Prussia looked fiercely out upon them from the wall.

They sat down together in two old chairs in the window, and they looked out into the dingy street, and Frank tried to recount all the great men—‘the other great men, as Maude said, half chaffing and half earnest—who had looked through those panes.  Tennyson, Ruskin, Emerson, Mill, Froude, Mazzini, Leigh Hunt—he had got so far when the matron returned.

There was a case in the corner with some of the wreckage from those vanished vessels.  Notes from old Goethe in a singularly neat boyish writing inscribed upon little ornamented cards.  Here, too, were small inscriptions which had lain upon presents from Carlyle to his wife.  It was pleasant among all that jangling of the past to think of the love which had written them, and that other love which had so carefully preserved them.  On one was written: ‘All good attend my darling through this gulf of time and through the long ocean it is leading to.  Amen.  Amen.  T. C.’  On another, dated 1850, and attached evidently to some birthday present, was: ‘Many years to my poor little Jeannie, and may the worst of them be past.  No good that is in me to give her shall ever be wanting while I live.  May God bless her.’  How strange that this apostle of reticence should have such privacies as these laid open before the curious public within so few years of his death!

‘This is her bedroom,’ said the matron.

‘And here is the old red bed,’ cried Frank.  It looked bare and gaunt and dreary with its uncurtained posts.

‘The bed belonged to Mrs. Carlyle’s mother,’ the matron explained.  ‘It’s the same bed that Mrs. Carlyle talks about in her letters when she says how she pulled it to pieces.’

‘Why did she pull it to pieces?’ asked Maude.

‘Better not inquire, dear.’

‘Indeed you’re right, sir.  If you get them into these old houses, it is very hard to get them out.  A cleaner woman than Mrs. Carlyle never came out of Scotland.  This little room behind was his dressing-room.  There’s his stick in the corner.  Look what’s written upon the window!’

Decidedly it was a ghostly house.  Scratched upon one of the panes with a diamond was the following piece of information—

‘John Harbel Knowles cleaned all the windows in this house, and painted part, in the eighteenth year of age.

March 7th, 1794.’

‘Who was he?’ asked Maude.

‘Nobody knows, miss!’  It was characteristic of Maude that she was so gentle in her bearing that every one always took it for granted that she was Miss.  Frank examined the writing carefully.

‘He was the son of the house and a young aristocrat who had never done a stroke of work before in his life,’ said he.

The matron was surprised.

‘What makes you say that, sir?’

‘What would a workman do with such a name as John Harbel Knowles, or with a diamond ring for that matter?  And who would dare to disfigure a window so, if he were not of the family?  And why should he be so proud of his work, unless work was a new and wondrous thing to him.  To paint part of the windows also sounds like the amateur and not the workman.  So I repeat that it was the first achievement of the son of the house.’

‘Well, indeed, I dare say you are right, though I never thought of it before,’ said the matron.  ‘Now this, up here, is Carlyle’s own room, in which he slept for forty-seven years.  In the case is a cast of his head taken after death.’

It was strange and rather ghastly to see a plaster head in this room where the head of flesh had so often lain.  Maude and Frank stood beside it, and gazed long and silently while the matron, half-bored and half-sympathetic, waited for them to move on.  It was an aquiline face, very different from any picture which they had seen, sunken cheeks, an old man’s toothless mouth, a hawk nose, a hollow eye—the gaunt timbers of what had once been a goodly house.  There was repose, and something of surprise also, in the features—also a very subtle serenity and dignity.

‘The distance from the ear to the forehead is said to be only equalled by Napoleon and by Gladstone.  That’s what they say,’ said the matron, with Scotch caution.

‘It’s the face of a noble man when all is said and done,’ said Frank.  ‘I believe that the true Thomas Carlyle without the dyspepsia, and the true Jane Welsh without the nerves, are knowing and loving each other in some further life.’

‘It is sweet to think so,’ cried Maude.  ‘Oh, I do hope that it is so!  How dear death would be if we could only be certain of that!’

The matron smiled complacently in the superior wisdom of the Shorter Catechism.  ‘There is neither marriage nor giving in marriage,’ said she, shaking her head.  ‘This is the spare bedroom, sir, where Mr. Emerson slept when he was here.  And now if you will step this way I will show you the study.’

It was the singular room which Carlyle had constructed in the hopes that he could shut out all the noises of the universe, the crowing of cocks, and the jingling of a young lady’s five-finger exercise in particular.  It had cost him a hundred odd pounds, and had ended in being unendurably hot in summer, impossibly cold in winter, and so constructed acoustically that it reverberated every sound in the neighbourhood.  For once even his wild and whirling words could hardly match the occasion—not all his kraft sprachen would be too much.  For the rest it was at least a roomy and lofty apartment, with space for many books, and for an irritable man to wander to and fro.  Prints there were of many historical notables, and slips of letters and of memoranda in a long glass case.

‘That is one of his clay pipes,’ said the matron.  ‘He had them all sent through to him from Glasgow.  And that is the pen with which he wrote Frederick.’

It was a worn, stubby old quill, much the worse for its monstrous task.  It at least of all quill pens might rest content with having done its work in the world.  Some charred paper beside it caught Frank’s eye.

‘Oh look, Maude,’ he cried.  ‘This is a little bit of the burned French Revolution.’

‘Oh, I remember.  He lent the only copy to a friend, and it was burned by mistake.’

‘What a blow!  What a frightful blow!  And to think that his first comment to his wife was, “Well, Mill, poor fellow, is very much cut up about this.”  There is Carlyle at his best.  And here is actually a shred of the old manuscript.  How beautifully he wrote in those days!’

‘Read this, sir,’ said the matron.

It was part of a letter from Carlyle to his publisher about his ruined work.  ‘Do not pity me,’ said he; ‘forward me rather as a runner that is tripped but will not lie there, but run and run again.’

‘See what positive misfortune can do for a man,’ said Frank.  ‘It raised him to a hero.  And yet he could not stand the test of a crowing cock.  How infinitely complex is the human soul—how illimitably great and how pitiably small!  Now, if ever I have a study of my own, this is what I want engraved upon the wall.  This alone is well worth our pilgrimage to Chelsea.’

It was a short exclamation which had caught his eye.

‘Rest!  Rest!  Shall I not have all eternity to rest in!’  That serene plaster face down yonder gave force to the brave words.  Frank copied them down onto the back of one of Maude’s cards.

And now they had finished the rooms, but the matron, catching a glow from these enthusiastic pilgrims, had yet other things to show them.  There was the back garden.  Here was the green pottery seat upon which the unphilosophic philosopher had smoked his pipe—a singularly cold and uncomfortable perch.  And here was where Mrs. Carlyle had tried to build a tent and to imagine herself in the country.  And here was the famous walnut tree—or at least the stumpy bole thereof.  And here was where the dog Nero was buried, best known of small white mongrels.

And last of all there was the subterranean and gloomy kitchen, in which there had lived that long succession of serving-maids of whom we gain shadowy glimpses in the Letters and in the Journal.  Poor souls, dwellers in the gloom, working so hard for others, so bitterly reviled when by chance some weakness of humanity comes to break, for an instant, the routine of their constant labour, so limited in their hopes and in their pleasures, they are of all folk upon this planet those for whom a man’s heart may most justly soften.  So said Frank as he gazed around him in the dark-cornered room.  ‘And never one word of sympathy for them, or of anything save scorn in all his letters.  His pen upholding human dignity, but where was the dignity of these poor girls for whom he has usually one bitter line of biography in his notes to his wife’s letters?  It’s the worst thing I have against him.’

‘Jemima wouldn’t have stood it,’ said Maude.

It was pleasant to be out in the open air once more, but they were in the pine groves of Woking before Maude had quite shaken off the gloom of that dark, ghost-haunted house.  ‘After all, you are only twenty-seven,’ she remarked as they walked up from the station.  She had a way of occasionally taking a subject by the middle in that way.

‘What then, dear?’

‘When Carlyle was only twenty-seven I don’t suppose he knew he was going to do all this.’

‘No, I don’t suppose so.’

‘And his wife—if he were married then—would feel as I do to you.’

‘No doubt.’

‘Then what guarantee have I that you won’t do it after all?’

‘Do what?’

‘Why, turn out a second Carlyle.’

‘Hear me swear!’ cried Frank, and they turned laughing into their own little gateway at the Lindens.

Our young married couples may feel that two is company and three is none, but there comes a little noisy intruder to break into their sweet intimacy.  The coming of the third is the beginning of a new life for them as well as for it—a life which is more useful and more permanent, but never so concentrated as before.  That little pink thing with the blinking eyes will divert some of the love and some of the attention, and the very trouble which its coming has caused will set its mother’s heart yearning over it.  Not so the man.  Some vague resentment mixes with his pride of paternity, and his wife’s sufferings rankle in his memory when she has herself forgotten them.  His pity, his fears, his helplessness, and his discomfort, give him a share in the domestic tragedy.  It is not without cause that in some societies it is the man and not the woman who receives the condolence and the sympathy.

There came a time when Maude was bad, and there came months when she was better, and then there were indications that a day was approaching, the very thought of which was a shadow upon her husband’s life.  For her part, with the steadfast, gentle courage of a woman, she faced the future with a sweet serenity.  But to him it was a nightmare—an actual nightmare which brought him up damp and quivering in those gray hours of the dawn, when dark shadows fall upon the spirit of man.  He had a steady nerve for that which affected himself, a nerve which would keep him quiet and motionless in a dentist’s chair, but what philosophy or hardihood can steel one against the pain which those whom we love have to endure.  He fretted and chafed, and always with the absurd delusion that his fretting and chafing were successfully concealed.  A hundred failures never convince a man how impossible it is to deceive a woman who loves him.  Maude watched him demurely, and made her plans.

‘Do you know, dear,’ said she, one evening, ‘if you can get a week of your holidays now, I think it would be a very good thing for you to accept that invitation of Mr. Mildmay’s, and spend a few days in golfing at Norwich.’

Frank stared at her open-eyed.

‘What!  Now!’

‘Yes, dear, now—at once.’

‘But now of all times.’

Maude looked at him with that glance of absolute obvious candour which a woman never uses unless she has intent to deceive.

‘Yes, dear—but only next week.  I thought it would brace you up for—well, for the week afterwards.’

‘You think the week afterwards?’

‘Yes, dear.  It would help me so, if I knew that you were in your best form.’

‘I!  What can it matter what form I am in.  But in any case, it is out of the question.’

‘But you could get leave.’

‘Oh yes, easily enough.’

‘Then do go.’

‘And leave you at such a time!’

‘No, no, you would be back.’

‘You can’t be so sure of that.  No, Maude, I should never forgive myself.  Such an idea would never enter my head.’

‘But for my sake—!’

‘That’s enough, Maude.  It is settled.’

Master Frank had a heavy foot when he did bring it down, and his wife recognised a decisive thud this time.  With a curious double current of feeling, she was pleased and disappointed at the same time, but more pleased than disappointed, so she kissed the marrer of her plots.

‘What an obstinate old boy it is!  But of course you know best, and I should much rather have you at home.  As you say, one can never be certain.’

In a conflict of wits the woman may lose a battle, but the odds are that she will win the campaign.  The man dissipates over many things, while she concentrates upon the one.  Maude had made up her mind absolutely upon one point, and she meant to attain it.  She tried here, she tried there, through a friend, through her mother, but Frank was still immovable.  The ordeal coming upon herself never disturbed her for an instant.  But the thought that Frank would suffer was unendurable.  She put herself in his place, and realised what it would be to him if he were in the house at such a time.  With many cunning devices she tried to lure him off, but still, in his stubborn way, he refused to be misled.  And then suddenly she realised that it was too late.

It was early one morning that the conviction came home to her, but he, at her side, knew nothing of it.  He came up to her before he left for the City.

‘You have not eaten anything, dear.’

‘No, Frank, I am not hungry.’

‘Perhaps, after you get up—’

‘Well, dear, I thought of staying in bed.’

‘You are not—?’

‘What nonsense, dear!  I want to keep very quiet until next week, when I may need all my strength.’

‘Dear girl, I would gladly give ten years of my life to have next week past.’

‘Silly old boy!  But I do think it would be wiser if I were to keep in bed.’

‘Yes, yes, do.’

‘I have a little headache.  Nothing to speak of, but just a little.’

‘Don’t you think Dr. Jordan had better give you something for it.’

‘Do you think so?  Well, just as you like.  You might call as you pass, and tell him to step up.’

And so, upon a false mission, the doctor was summoned to her side, but found a very real mission waiting for him when he got there.  She had written a note for Frank the moment that he had left the house, and he found both it and a conspiracy of silence waiting for him when he returned in the late afternoon.  The note was upon the hall-table, and he eagerly tore it open.

‘My dear boy,’ said this mendacious epistle, ‘my head is still rather bad, and Dr. Jordan thought that it would be wiser if I were to have an undisturbed rest, but I will send down to you when I feel better.  Until then I had best, perhaps, remain alone.  Mr. Harrison sent round to say that he would come to help you to pot the bulbs, so that will give you something to do.  Don’t bother about me, for I only want a little rest.—Maude.’

It seemed very unnatural to him to come back and not to hear the swift rustle of the dress which followed always so quickly upon the creak of his latch-key that they might have been the same sound.  The hall and dining-room seemed unhomely without the bright welcoming face.  He wandered about in a discontented fashion upon his tiptoes, and then, looking through the window, he saw Harrison his neighbour coming up the path with a straw basket in his hand.  He opened the door for him with his finger upon his lips.

‘Don’t make a row, Harrison,’ said he, ‘my wife’s bad.’

Harrison whistled softly.

‘Not—?’

‘No, no, not that.  Only a headache, but she is not to be disturbed.  We expect that next week.  Come in here and smoke a pipe with me.  It was very kind of you to bring the bulbs.’

‘I am going back for some more.’

‘Wait a little.  You can go back presently.  Sit down and light your pipe.  There is some one moving about upstairs.  It must be that heavy-footed Jemima.  I hope she won’t wake Maude up.  I suppose one must expect such attacks at such a time.’

‘Yes, my wife was just the same.  No, thank you, I’ve just had some tea.  You look worried, Crosse.  Don’t take things too hard.’

‘I can’t get the thought of next week out of my head.  If anything goes wrong—well there, what can I do?  I never knew how a man’s nerves may be harrowed before.  And she is such a saint, Harrison—such an absolutely unselfish saint!  You’ll never guess what she tried to do.’

‘What, then?’

‘She knew what it would mean to me—what it will mean to me—to sit here in impotence while she goes through this horrible business.  She guessed in some extraordinary way what my secret feelings were about it.  And she actually tried to deceive me as to when it was to occur—tried to get me out of the house on one pretext or another until it was all over.  That was her plot, and, by Jove, she tried it so cleverly that she would have managed it if something had not put me on my guard.  She was a little too eager, unnaturally so, and I saw through her game.  But think of it, the absolute unselfishness of it.  To consider me at such a time, and to face her trouble alone and unsupported in order to make it easier for me.  She wanted me to go to Norwich and play golf.’

‘She must have thought you pretty guileless, Crosse, to be led away so easily.’

‘Yes, it was a hopeless attempt to deceive me on such a point, or to dream for an instant that my instincts would not tell me when she had need of me.  But none the less it was beautiful and characteristic.  You don’t mind my talking of these things, Harrison?’

‘My dear chap, it is just what you need.  You have been bottling things up too much.  Your health will break down under it.  After all, it is not so serious as all that.  The danger is very much exaggerated.’

‘You think so.’

‘I’ve had the experience twice now.  You’ll go to the City some fine morning, and when you come back the whole thing will be over.’

‘Indeed it won’t.  I have made arrangements at the office, and from the hour that she first seems bad I will never stir from the house.  For all she may say, I know very well that it gives her strength and courage to feel that I am there.’

‘You may not know that it is coming on?’

Frank laughed incredulously.

‘We’ll see about that,’ said he.  ‘And you think from your experience, Harrison, that it is not so very bad after all?’

‘Oh no.  It soon passes.’

‘Soon!  What do you mean by soon?’

‘Jordan was there six hours the first time.’

‘Good God!  Six hours!’  Frank wiped his forehead.  ‘They must have seemed six years.’

‘They were rather long.  I kept on working in the garden.  That’s the tip.  Keep on doing something and it helps you along wonderfully.’

‘That’s a good suggestion, Harrison.  What a curious smell there is in the air!  Do you notice a sort of low, sweetish, spirity kind of scent?  Well, perhaps it’s my imagination.  I dare say that my nerves are a bit strung up these days.  But that is a capital idea of yours about having some work to do.  I should like to work madly for those hours.  Have everything up out of the back garden and plant it all again in the front.’

Harrison laughed.

‘I’ll tell you something less heroic,’ said he; ‘you could keep all these bulbs, and pot them then.  By the way, I’ll go round and get the others.  Don’t bother about the door.  I shall leave it open, for I won’t be five minutes.’

‘And I’ll put these in the greenhouse,’ said Frank.  He took the basket of bulbs and he laid them all out on the wooden shelf of the tiny conservatory which leaned against the back of the house.  When he came out there was a kitten making a noise somewhere.  It was a low sound, but persistent, coming in burst after burst.  He took the rake and jabbed with the handle amongst the laurel bushes under their bedroom window.  The beast might waken Maude, and so it was worth some trouble to dislodge it.  He could not see it, but when he had poked among the bushes and cried ‘Skat!’ several times, the crying died away, and he carried his empty basket into the dining-room.  There he lit his pipe again, and waited for Harrison’s return.

There was that bothersome kitten again.  He could hear it mewing away somewhere.  It did not sound so loud as in the garden, so perhaps it would not matter.  He felt very much inclined to steal upstairs upon tiptoe and see if Maude were stirring yet.  After all, if Jemima, or whoever it was, could go clumping about in heavy boots over his head, there was no fear that he could do any harm.  And yet she had said that she would ring or send word the moment she could see him, and so perhaps he had better wait where he was.  He put his head out of the window and cried ‘Shoo!’ into the laurel bushes several times.  Then he sat in the armchair with his back to the door.  Steps came heavily along the hall, and he saw dimly with the back corner of his eye that some one was in the doorway carrying something.  He thought that really Harrison might have brought the bulbs in more quietly, and so he treated him with some coldness, and did not turn round to him.

‘Put it in the out-house,’ said he.

‘Why the out-house?’

‘We keep them there.  But you can put it under the sideboard, or in the coal-scuttle, or where you like as long as you don’t make any more noise.’

‘Why, surely, Crosse—’  But Frank suddenly sprang out of his chair.

‘I’m blessed if that infernal kitten isn’t somewhere in the room!’

And there when he turned was the grim, kindly face of old Doctor Jordan facing him.  He carried in the crook of his arm a brown shawl with something round and small muffled up in it.  There was one slit in front, and through this came a fist about the size of a marble, the thumb doubled under the tiny fingers, and the whole limb giving circular waves, as if the owner were cheering lustily at his own successful arrival.  ‘Here am I, good people, hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!’ cried the waving hand.  Then as the slit in the shawl widened Frank saw that behind the energetic fist there was a huge open mouth, a little button of a nose, and two eyes which were so resolutely screwed up that it seemed as if the owner had made a resolution never under any circumstances to take the least notice of this new world into which it had been transported.  Frank dropped his pipe and stood staring at this apparition.

‘What!  What’s that?’

‘The baby!’

‘Baby?  Whose baby?’

‘Your baby, of course.’

‘My baby!  Where—where did you get it?’

Doctor Jordan burst out laughing.

‘You are like a man who has just been wakened out of his sleep,’ said he.  ‘Why, Crosse, your wife has been bad all day, but she’s all right now, and here’s your son and heir—a finer lad of the age I never saw—fighting weight about seven pounds.’

Frank was a very proud man at the roots of his nature.  He did not readily give himself away.  Perhaps if he had been quite alone he might at that moment, as the great wave of joy washed through his soul, bearing all his fears and forebodings away upon its crest, have dropped upon his knees in prayer.  But prayer comes not from the knee but from the heart, and the whole strength of his nature breathed itself out in silent thanks to that great Fate which goes its way regardless either of thanks or reproaches.  The doctor saw a pale self-contained young man before him, and thought him strangely wanting in emotion.

‘Well!’ said he, impatiently.  ‘Is she all right?’

‘Yes.  Won’t you take your son?’

‘Could she see me?’

‘I don’t suppose five minutes would do any harm.’

Dr. Jordan said afterwards that it was three steps which took Frank up the fifteen stairs.  The nurse who met him at the corner looks back on it as the escape of her lifetime.  Maude lay in bed with a face as pale as the pillow which framed it.  Her lips were bloodless but smiling.

‘Frank!’

‘My own dear sweet girlie!’

‘You never knew.  Did you, Frank?  Tell me that you never knew.’

And at that anxious question the foolish pride which keeps the emotions of the strong man buried down in his soul as though they were the least honourable part of his nature, fell suddenly to nothing, and Frank dropped with his head beside the white face upon the pillow, and lay with his arm across the woman whom he loved, and sobbed as he had not sobbed since his childhood.  Her cheek was wet with his tears.  He never saw the doctor until he came beside him and touched him on the shoulder.

‘I think you had better go now,’ said he.

‘Sorry to be a fool, doctor,’ said Frank, blushing hotly in his clumsy English fashion.  ‘It’s just more than I can stand.’

‘Sir,’ the doctor answered, ‘I owe you an apology, for I had done you an injustice.  Meanwhile your son is about to be dressed, and there is hardly room for three men in one bedroom.’

So Frank went down into the darkening room below, and mechanically lighting his pipe, he sat with his elbows upon his knees and stared out into the gathering gloom where one bright evening star twinkled in a violet sky.  The gentle hush of the gloaming was around him, and some late bird was calling outside amongst the laurels.  Above he heard the shuffling of feet, the murmur of voices, and then amid it all those thin glutinous cries, his voice, the voice of this new man with all a man’s possibilities for good and for evil, who had taken up his dwelling with them.  And as he listened to those cries, a gentle sadness was mixed with his joy, for he felt that things were now for ever changed—that whatever sweet harmonies of life might still be awaiting him, from this hour onwards, they might form themselves into the subtlest and loveliest of chords, but it must always be as a trio, and never as the dear duet of the past.

(Extract from a letter to the Author from Mrs. Frank Crosse.)

‘It is very singular that you should say with such confidence that you know that our baby is a splendid one, and further on you say that in some ways it differs from any other baby.  It is so true, but neither Frank nor I can imagine how you knew.  We both think it so clever of you to have found it out.  When you write to us, do please tell us how you discovered it.

‘I want to tell you something about baby, since you so kindly ask me, but Frank says there is no use my beginning as there is only one quire of paper in the house.  As a matter of fact, I shall be quite short, which is not because I have not plenty to say—you cannot think what a dear he is—but because he may wake up at any moment.  After that happens I can only write with one hand, while I wave a feather fan with the other, and it is so difficult then to say exactly what you mean.  In any case you know that I have not the habit of collecting and writing down my ideas, so please forgive me if this seems a stupid letter.  Frank could have done it splendidly.  But he has so many sweet and quite remarkable ways, that I ought to be able to put some of them down for you.

‘It will be easier perhaps if I imagine a day of him—and one of his days is very much like another.  No one could ever say that he was irregular in his habits.  First thing in the morning I go over to his cot to see if he is awake yet—though, of course, I know that he can’t be, for he always lets us know—the darling!  However, I go over all the same, and I find everything quiet and nothing visible of baby, but a tiny, turned-up nose.  It is so exactly Frank’s nose, only that his is curved the other way.  Then, as I bend over his cot, there is a small sigh, such a soft, comfortable sound!  Then a sort of earthquake takes place under the eider down, and a tightly clenched fist appears and is waved in the air.  He has such a pleasant, cheerful way of waving his fists.  Then one eye is half opened, as if he were looking round to see if it were safe to open the other one, and then he gives a long, sorrowful wail as he realises that his bottle is not where he left it when he went to sleep.  In a moment he is in my arms and quite happy again, playing with the lace round the neck of my pink dressing-gown.  When he finds that his nice warm bath is all ready for him, he becomes quite jovial, and laughs and chuckles to himself.  Something awfully funny must have happened to him before ever he came into this world at all, for nothing that has occurred since could account for the intense expression of amusement that one can often see in his eyes.  When he laughs, Frank says that he looks like some jolly old clean-shaven toothless friar—so chubby and good-humoured.  He takes the greatest interest in everything in the room, watches the nurse moving about, looks out of the window, and examines my hair and my dress very critically.  He loves to see untidy hair and a bright tie, or a brooch will often catch his eye, and make him smile.  His smile is the most wonderful thing!  As he lies gazing with his great serious blue eyes, his whole face suddenly lights up, his mouth turns up at one corner in the most irresistible way, and his cheeks all go off into dimples.  He looks so sweet and innocent, and at the same time so humorous and wicked, that his foolish mother wants to laugh at him and to weep over him at the same time.

‘Then comes his bath, and there is a sad display of want of faith upon his part.  He enjoys the process, but he is convinced that only his own exertions keep him from drowning, so his little fists are desperately clenched, his legs kick up and down the whole time, and he watches every movement of mother and nurse with suspicion.  He enjoys being dressed, and smiles at first, and then he suddenly remembers that he has not had his breakfast.  Then the smiles vanish, the small round face grows so red and angry, and all covered with little wrinkles, and there is a dismal wailing—poor darling!  If the bottle is not instantly forthcoming he will howl loudly, and beat the air with his fists until he gets it.  He does remind me so of his father sometimes.  He is always hunting for his bottle, and will seize my finger, or a bit of my dress, or anything, and carry it to his mouth, and when he finds it isn’t what he wants, he throws it away very angrily.  When finally he does get the bottle, he becomes at once the most contented being in the whole world, and sucks away with such great long pulls, and such dear little grunts in between.  Then afterwards, a well-washed, well-fed atom, he is ready to look about him and observe things.  I am sure that he has his father’s brains, and that he is storing up all sorts of impressions and observations for future use, for he notices everything.  I used to think that babies were stupid and indifferent—and perhaps other babies are—but he is never indifferent.  Sometimes he is pleased and amused, and sometimes angry, and sometimes gravely interested, but he is always wide awake and taking things in.  When I go into his room, he always looks at my head, and if I have my garden hat with the flowers, he is so pleased.  He much prefers chiffon to silk.

‘Almost the first thing that struck me when I saw him, and it strikes me more and more, was, how could any one have got the idea of original sin?  The people who believe in it can never have looked into a baby’s eyes.  I love to watch them, and sometimes fancy I can see a faint shade of reminiscence in them, as if he had still some memories of another life, and could tell me things if he could only speak.  One day as I sat beside his cot—Oh dear!  I hear his Majesty calling.  So sorry!  Good-bye.—Yours very truly,

Maude Crosse.’

P.S.—I have not time to read this over, but I may say, in case I omitted it before, that he really is a very remarkable baby.’