And, by the way, I'm sure it's time I got in all those other bits I know about. Those poor birds of the South Pole, still waiting on the ice for me to bring them fame! And then that other king, but oh! he was so dull. He missed the best of everything in life: for William II., 1087, never married; and so of course he never knew what we shall know in four more weeks, that 'A child's kiss, set on thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad.'
And when the labour and the travail are all done, and my baby rests in my arms, I shall have more 'experience.' I shall be linked up with all the other mothers of the world. Oh, dare I say it? Humbly I do. I shall be linked up, faintly and far off, even with Mary.
PART II
FOUR YEARS LATER
CHAPTER I
'I start life on my own account and don't like it.'
Grammar is not my strong point, and I never could quote correctly, but my geography is hopeless. I always remember, however, when I am at sea that the earth revolves around the sun, and on its axis, too, for I can feel the double motion in every fibre of my being.
Now that I am once more on dry land and the universe has ceased to rock I have gone back to my childish and comfortable belief that the world is a nice, firm, square thing fixed on four legs like a dining-room table.
I really am a shocking sailor, though 'the Gidger'[#]—my small daughter—loves the sea. The stewardess was an angel of light to me, yet she insisted on my turning out for all the boat drills. I felt I would so much rather lie in my berth than bother about my place in a boat if we were torpedoed, that it would be so much less exertion to go down comfortably in the big ship than toss about in a small boat on the chance of being saved. One great advantage of mal de mer is that all other sensations are obliterated. I was not conscious of the least fear when the ship next to ours went down, and the fact that our own escaped a like fate by a miracle left me cold. Even my loneliness and misery at my first parting from Michael since our marriage were all forgotten—swallowed up in one great desire to lie down flat and perhaps take a little iced champagne, 'for my stomach's sake,' like poor darling Timothy.
[#] Re the nick-name Gidger, the first 'G' is pronounced as in Gideon and the second 'g' as in German.