Part 22 (2/2)

”Yes, I'm glad we could come back,” agreed Oliver pleasantly, though he appeared to Susan's quick eye to be making an effort.

”By the way, I haven't spoken of your literary work,” remarked the rector, with the manner of a man who is saying something very agreeable.

”I have never been to the theatre, but I understand that it is losing a great deal of its ill odour. I always remember when anything is said about the stage that, after all, Shakespeare was an actor. We may be old-fas.h.i.+oned in Dinwiddie,” he pursued in the complacent tone in which the admission of this failing is invariably made, ”but I don't think we can have any objection to sweet, clean plays, with an elevating moral tone to them. They are no worse, anyway, than novels.”

Though Oliver kept his face under such admirable control, Susan, glancing at him quickly, saw a shade of expression, too fine for amus.e.m.e.nt, too cordial for resentment, pa.s.s over his features. His colour, which was always high, deepened, and raising his head, he brushed the smooth dark hair back from his forehead. Through some intuitive strain of sympathy, Susan understood, while she watched him, that his plays were as vital a matter in his life as the children were in Virginia's.

”I must run up and see Harry before he goes to sleep,” she said, feeling instinctively that the conversation was becoming a strain.

At the allusion to his grandson, the rector's face lost immediately its expression of forced pleasantness and relapsed into its look of genial charm.

”You ought to be proud of that boy, Oliver,” he observed, beaming.

”There's the making of a fine man in him, but you mustn't let Jinny spoil him. It took all my strength and authority to keep Lucy from ruining Jinny, and I've always said that my brother-in-law Tom Bland would have been a first-rate fellow if it hadn't been for the way his mother raised him. G.o.d knows, I like a woman to be wrapped up heart and soul in her household--and I don't suppose anybody ever accused the true Southern lady of lacking in domesticity--but if they have a failing, which I refuse to admit, it is that they are almost too soft-hearted where their children--especially their sons--are concerned.”

”I used to tell Virginia that she gave in to Harry too much when he was a baby,” said Oliver, who was evidently not without convictions regarding the rearing of his offspring; ”but she hasn't been nearly so bad about it since Jenny came. Jenny is the one I'm anxious about now.

She is a headstrong little beggar and she has learned already how to get around her mother when she wants anything. It's been worse, too,” he added, ”since we lost the last poor little chap. Ever since then Virginia has been in mortal terror for fear something would happen to the others.”

”It was hard on her,” said the rector. ”We men can't understand how women feel about a thing like that, though,” he added gently. ”I remember when we lost our babies--you know we had three before Virginia came, but none of them lived more than a few hours--that I thought Lucy would die of grief and disappointment. You see they have all the burden and the anxiety of it, and I sometimes think that a child begins to live for a woman a long time before a man ever thinks of it as a human being.”

”I suppose you're right,” returned Oliver in the softened tone which proved to Susan that he was emotionally stirred. ”I tried to be as sympathetic with Virginia as I could, but--do you know?--I stopped to ask myself sometimes if I could really understand. It seemed to her so strange that I wasn't knocked all to pieces by the thing--that I could go on writing as if nothing had happened.”

”I am not sure that it isn't beyond the imagination of a man to enter into a woman's most sacred feeling,” remarked the rector, with a touch of the sentimentality in which he religiously shrouded the feminine s.e.x.

So ineradicable, indeed, was his belief in the inherent virtue of every woman, that he had several times fallen a helpless victim in the financial traps of conscienceless Delilahs. But since his innocence was as temperamental a quality as was Virginia's maternal pa.s.sion, experience had taught him nothing, and the fact that he had been deceived in the past threw no shadow of safeguard around his steps in the present. This endearing trait, which made him so successful as a husband, was probably the cause of his unmitigated failure as a reformer. In looking at a woman, it was impossible for him to see anything except perfection.

When Susan reached the top of the staircase, Mrs. Pendleton called to her, through the half open door of the nursery, to come in and hear how beautifully Lucy was saying her prayers. Her voice was full of a suppressed excitement; there was a soft pink flush in her cheeks; and it seemed to Susan that the presence of her grandchildren had made her almost a girl again. She sat on the edge of a trundle-bed slipping a nightgown over the plump shoulders of little Lucy, who held herself very still and prim, for she was a serious child, with a natural taste for propriety. Her small plain face, with its prominent features and pale blue eyes, had a look of intense earnestness and concentration, as though the business of getting to bed absorbed all her energies; and the only movement she made was to toss back the slender and very tight braid of brown hair from her shoulders. She said her prayer as if it were the multiplication table, and having finished, slid gently into bed, and held up her face to be kissed.

”Jenny wouldn't drink but half of her bottle, Miss Virginia,” said Marthy, appearing suddenly on the threshold of Virginia's bedroom, for the youngest child slept in the room with her mother. ”She dropped off to sleep so sound that I couldn't wake her.”

”I hope she isn't sick, Marthy,” responded Virginia in an anxious tone.

”Did she seem at all feverish?”

”Naw'm, she ain't feverish, she's jest sleepy headed.”

”Well, I'll come and look at her as soon as I can persuade Harry to finish his prayers. He stopped in the middle of them, and he refuses to bless anybody but himself.”

She spoke gravely, gazing with her exhaustless patience over the impish yellow head of Harry, who knelt, in his little nightgown, on the rug at her feet. His roving blue eyes met Susan's as she came over to him, while his chubby face broke into a delicious smile.

”Don't notice him, Susan,” said Virginia, in her lovely voice which was as full of tenderness and as lacking in humour as her mother's. ”Harry, you shan't speak to Aunt Susan until you've been good and finished your prayers.”

”Don't want to speak to Aunt Susan,” retorted the monster of infant depravity, slipping his bare toes through a rent in the rug, and doubling up with delight at his insubordination.

”I never knew him to behave like this before,” said Virginia, almost in tears from shame and weariness. ”It must be the excitement of getting here. He is usually so good. Now, Harry, begin all over again. 'G.o.d bless dear papa, G.o.d bless dear mamma, G.o.d bless dear grandmamma, G.o.d bless dear grandpapa, G.o.d bless dear Lucy, G.o.d bless dear Jenny, G.o.d bless all our dear friends.'”

”G.o.d bless dear Harry,” recited the monster.

”He has gone on like that ever since I started,” said poor Virginia. ”I don't know what to do about it. It seems dreadful to let him go to bed without saying his prayers properly. Now, Harry, please, please be good; poor mother is so tired, and she wants to go and kiss little Jenny good-night. 'G.o.d bless dear papa,' and I'll let you get in bed.”

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