This Freedom

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

This, cut and dried, glowingly enlarged in long interviews with Mr. Sturgiss and Mr. Field, succinctly reduced to writing by the firm that it might be fairly studied, was before her, not demanding, but eagerly absorbing, her most earnest attention when she was a fortnight from her trial. This was the event whose momentous incidence on her career placed the days then in process and immediately in prospect on parity of importance with their meaning to Harry, absorbed in preparation for his case. There was so much to weigh; and like a threat, a doom, banked her impending banishment from affairs, distracting her, haunting her, hurrying her. There was so much to do, to settle, to wind up (for she found herself arranging for the change even while she debated it); and in the midst of it she was to be cut off as by term of imprisonment! There was so much to scheme, to plan, to dream (her mind already elevated among the high places of her new outlook); and between now and action she was to go—out of action.

Whereas Harry.... Whose child it was also to be....

Yes, injurious!

Not injurious as between dear Harry and herself; but injurious as between his sex and hers. There were moments of thinking upon the difference when she could have conceived a grudge against the child she was to bear.

And Harry could not perceive the difference! Immersed in his preparations and, when the case opened, lost to all else in his case, he presented precisely that faculty (and that permission by convention) of complete detachment from his home that long she had known to be man’s most outstanding and most enviable quality. He had no attention to spare for the consideration of her own problem and ambition, and she was too honourable to his interests, and too devoted to him in his interests, to bother him with hers. But, more significantly to her feelings than that, he was also too immersed to offer her, in her ordeal of childbirth, the sympathy and the anxiety that, unengrossed, he would have shown. It was there, profound and loving, beneath the surface; but his work came first. He was a man, capable of detachment, permitted by convention to practise detachment, by gift of, nature not inhibited from detachment. A man, he could put it beneath the surface. A woman, in conflict of her instincts and her ambitions, it was her ambitions that she must sink. That was it! Yes, injurious.

And he did not even understand.

On what proved to be the evening before her delivery, and was the third day of Harry’s case, she was lying, as she had lain some days, on the Chesterfield in the drawing-room, loosely robed. Harry had thought he could get back to tea, and got back. He came to her with tenderest concern, and with immense tenderness at once was talking to her. But she could see! The apparent deepening of all the lines of his dear, striking face, as of one who for hours has been under enormous concentration; the slight huskiness of his voice, from hard service; the repressed excitation in his air; the frequent glint behind the soft regard of his eyes, as of one that has been hunting high and hunting well—she could see; she could tell where was his spirit!

Her own went lovingly to meet it where it was. “Ah, never mind all that, Harry. Tell me all that’s been happening to you. How is it going, Harry?”

Dear Harry! Most mannish man! She laughed (and he laughed too, knowing perfectly well why she laughed) to note the delight, like a dog from chain, with which he bounded off into his mind’s absorption. He sat upright. He grabbed for a cigarette and inhaled it tremendously. “It’s going like cutting butter with a hot knife. I started cross-examining today. I gave him three and a half hours of it, straight off the ice, and I’m not through with him yet. Not half. If he had as many legs as a centipede he’d still not have one left to stand on when I’m through with him. I doubt he’ll have his marrow bones to crawl out on, the way he’s crumpling up. Even old Hounslow at his worst can’t possibly misdirect the jury, the way I’ve gummed their noses on the trail. I’ll tell you—”

He told her.