Rose and Rose

by E. V. Lucas

I had no right to press the case. But I could not refrain from saying—“Then you are never to visit me at all?”

“Of course: some day,” she said. “But not yet. It couldn’t be for a long while. You see. . .”

And then I learned that she was again to become a mother.

How the world rushes on! A child grows to be a girl, and a girl a wife, before one can turn round. And then there is another child and the same restless urgency sets in once more. I thought of some lines I had read years and years ago that had stuck in my mind:

There is so much we ne’er can know—
No time, no time!
We seem to only come—to go.

I went back feeling all out of tune and dissatisfied. This may be a common experience with parents after their first visit to their married daughters; but I had not even thought of it before. True, I had set out with some vague misgivings, but so often—it is almost the rule—the realization is better than our fears for it, that I had discounted the premonition. And now I knew that my girl had made a mistake. It was not so much that she was unhappy as that she had lost her old habit of happiness. She had become passive where she had been vividly active. Instead of joy she had found resignation. I don’t mean that she was broken-spirited in any way: but she was too quiet. If I were God I should be very much ashamed of having added resignation to young wives’ armouries.

Rose’s second baby was a girl. Eustace sent me a telegram to that effect, and I wondered much on her feelings toward it. There had been no joy in her voice when she had told me of its coming.

I went up to see them when Rose the second—for the child was named after her mother—was two weeks old, and was led into the room by Eustace.

Much could be written on the different demeanour of husbands on such occasions, for some behave like impresarios and some like trespassers, some are boisterous and some are perplexed, but none, however much they want to disguise it, are totally without pride. Even those husbands who are as much embarrassed and hampered by their wives presenting them with a son or a daughter as they would be if their valets were to lose an arm, cannot wholly conceal their triumph. Eustace, although with cool reserve, belonged to the impresario class.

How often does one hear well-meaning people say, when discussing the marriages of others (and of course discussion is superfluous and insipid when marriages are satisfactory), “Ah, if only they had had a child, what a difference it would have made!” But in my experience children can divide parents quite as much as they can unite them. I may have entertained some hope that the little pink creature with the dark silky hair in Rose’s arms was to bring Rose and Eustace closer; but there was no indication of it. Again when their eyes met no light was kindled. How that other child, that boy of her desire, would have affected the love of husband and wife it was not now possible to say; but this little helpless mite in its mother’s arms obviously was without any federating gift.