So he did not remember Jerry. And yet he must, or why did he look at her so? Many times she reviled fashion of ceremony, as courses were brought on and taken off and dinner slowly rolled by with always the balancing of his and Jerry’s gaze across the table, while he talked vaguely and diffusely to Joy. It was when they were having coffee—Mabel had declared the men were too few to be left alone—that he seemed to give his attention to Joy for the first time. She had not been lessening her contemplative gaze, and he suddenly broke into it. “I’m sorry—I’ve rattled on so. I don’t know what’s in the air to-night—I’m not generally talkative. Are you of those awful ones who ‘draw people out,’ young cousin?”
He was almost boyish now. She had been noting one or two grey hairs sparkling in his ruddy crop.
“I don’t think—I’ve drawn you out at all,” she said, and her glance travelled to Jerry. He did not look this time, but his eyes were well distanced by now.
“I am glad you brought her with you,” he said simply.
The remark was so direct, after his circuitous discourse throughout the meal, that she was left in surprise without a response. Mabel, sensitive to Jerry’s aloofness, Phil’s apparent boredom and Joy’s non-registering silence, rose and wafted them into the drawing room. “Eustace, you can play the Victrola or do something entertaining while I show Joy the babies,” she demanded. “She doesn’t know she has some more cousins to meet!”
They left the four, for another elevator trip. “You have—children?” said Joy in awe.
Mabel nodded. “Three,” she said, with the first pride she had shown.
Three children—in as many years of marriage. Small wonder Mabel looked a little faded, in spite of every aura wealth could cast. The nursery was a long, wide room, into which they tiptoed, Mabel turning on the light of a small rose-shaded lamp. Three little white beds, with tiny, slumbering faces pressed hard against the pillows—faces beautiful with the unearthly beauty of babyhood on which all of life’s beauty is yet to be written. A moment while Joy gazed, and Mabel, going from one room to another, murmured ecstatic nothings. Then Mabel turned off the light, and they went to the door shivering in the cold from the open windows that they had not felt while looking at the children.
On the other side of the door Joy stammered her enchantment of eternity’s marvel. Mabel smiled, her hand on the knob, lingering as if she could not bear to leave that hold upon the nursery.
“You will never know—until you have them,” she said. “The greatest happiness in all the world, Joy. If only people realized! I myself didn’t know. I thought I had come to the crown of my life when I married. To have the love of the one you love—that is surely the greatest honour and happiness that life can bring. But this—this brings so infinitely much more—that you think you could only have barely existed, before!” She relinquished the knob, turning it gently so that the catch would hold. “All the happiness in the world, Joy, transmutes itself into this great one. After all, everything speaks in terms of love.” She laughed, half apologetically. “It’s true—we married people pity everyone who doesn’t go and do likewise!”