"Useful? Mammy Cely!" she said, "Oh, I think I could not live without her. I know so little about children." Then, in sudden alarm she faltered, "Were you thinking of taking her? I—I had almost forgotten you sent her to me." She looked so distressed that he hastened to assure her that the woman should stay as long as she was needed. He could get somebody else for Elmhurst.
She felt so profoundly grateful that she sung the praises of the colored woman—how she could trust her as she could not trust herself, because Mammy Cely knew so much more, and how she was sure she loved baby Philip as if he were her own, these, and other words of confidence which afterwards, strangely enough, recoiled on her head.
To all of which he had listened, bowing gravely, and looking at her with that close attention which always made her forget what it was that she had meant to say. Somehow he had a deadening effect upon her speech. She could not help feeling deep down in her heart, that he believed her responsible for his brother's defection. It was natural enough that he should try to excuse him; he had always done that, Mammy Cely said, even when he was a boy, and had often taken the punishment that belonged to Victor rather than tell. He had been very, very fond of Victor, she said.
Yes, it was natural enough, Margaret thought, but still it did not conduce to conversation, and she was glad that day when he went away. Then she had gone to the nursery, another person, and taken little Philip and clucked to him, and touched his cheeks to make him smile and told him what she thought of his Uncle Richard—how cold he was, how silent, how he scared her, how he palsied her tongue or else made her say things she did not mean to say, how—greatest indignity of all—he had even looked askance at him, her "pe'cious lamb," and almost turned him upside down! but how he had left them Mammy Cely, and so they would forgive him, if only he would never come again.
And Baby Philip smiled a smile cherubic and murmured "Goo-o! ah-goo-o! for the first time, and Margaret almost smothered him with kisses, and was sure that never did mother have a comforter so sweet, a confidant so safe and yet so sympathetic.
Where does a baby get its balm? In that Gilead whence it came? From the skilful physician who knows all needs and uses tiniest instruments sometimes to reach hidden wounds? Who knows? At any rate into Margaret's sore heart was coming day by day the healing that proceeds only from time and the touch of little hands. More and more, by her own volition, her world was coming to be bounded by the walls of her baby's room. Here at least she was safe from the thrusts of meddlesome gossip and the pin pricks of Gossip's handmaid—Curiosity. Here she could live the simple satisfying life that "maketh rich," and "addeth no sorrow" that she was not willing to bear.
CHAPTER VIII
A NEW RÔLE FOR RICHARD
In all these months Margaret had not once heard from her husband. Rumors had come to her that he had not gone alone, but even this she could not verify, for she had ended the subject peremptorily with the informant who brought the story,—but the thorn implanted that day rankled. Her judgment and her knowledge of him told her it was true.
The fiction of her husband's call abroad on urgent business served its purpose as a nominal explanation, but it deceived nobody. Every one knew that Victor De Jarnette had no large business interests in Europe, or anywhere else, and that he was not the man to make any great sacrifice for them if he had had, being a man of pleasure more than of affairs. The knowing raised their brows and smiled. The sympathetic said, "Poor Margaret!"