Delphy positively snorted. "Ef you wanter raise dis yer chile, Miss Euginny," she replied, "you'd des better let me alont. Hit's a won'er you ain' been de deaf er him 'fo' I got yer wid yo' sto' physicks en yo' real doctahs es dunno one baby f'om anur when dey meet 'im in de street. I reckon, ef he'd got de colic you'd have kilt 'im terreckly, you en yo' sto' physicks en yo' real doctahs! Now, you'd des better dress yo'se'f an' go down yonder ter de parlour."
But as she finished Dudley strolled in and stood beaming down upon his offspring as it lay, round and pinkly impressive, in Delphy's lap. "Fine boy, eh, Delphy?" he inquired proudly.
"Dat 'tis, suh," responded Delphy heartily, "an' he's des de spit er you dis we'y minit."
The following morning Dudley went to Washington for several days, and Eugenia was left with Miss Chris and the child. Lottie and the little girls were with Bernard, who was dragging to a tedious end in Florida, where he had been ordered as a last resource. Poor, pretty, ineffectual Lottie had succumbed to the unrelenting pressure of her duty. She had sacrificed herself from sheer lack of the force necessary to withstand fate.
During Dudley's absence Eugenia gave herself up to as much of the baby as Delphy grudgingly allowed her, sewing, in the long intervals, on tiny slips as delicate as cobwebs. Even this occupation was not wholly a peaceful one. "Des wait twel he begin ter crawl, en' den whar'l dose spider webs be?" propounded Delphy in the afternoon of the third day. "Dey'll be in de ash-ba'r'l er at de back er de fireplace, en dat's whar dey b'long. Marse Dudley ain' never wo' no sech trash ner is you yo'se'f."
Eugenia did not respond. She seated herself beside the window, and with one eye on her child and one on her work sewed silently, her white hands gleaming amid the laces in her lap. The training of her slave-holding ancestors was strong upon her, and she regarded Delphy's liberty of speech as an inherent right of her position. The Battle servants had always spoken their minds to their mistresses in a manner which caused them to become hopeless failures when they hired themselves into strange families, where the devotion of their lives could not be offered in extenuation of the freedom of their tongues.
So when Eugenia spoke, after a placid pause, it was merely to suggest that the baby's head was hanging too far over Delphy's knee. "That can't be healthful, Delphy," she said, half timidly. Delphy grunted and adjusted matters with a protest. "Hit's de way yourn done hung en Miss Meely's done hung befo' you," she muttered. Eugenia turned to the window and looked out upon the back yard, where the horse-chestnut tree was a mass of bloom, delicate as a cloud. In the beds below, roses were out in red and white, and against the gray wall of the stable at the end of the brick walk purple flags were flaunting in the shadow. Across the city, beyond the tin roofs and the chimney-pots, the sun was going down in a mist as sheer as gauze, and the surrounding atmosphere was charged with opalescent lights.
Her eyes rested upon it with a quick sense of its beauty; then the sunset lost itself in the round of her thoughts. She had missed Dudley, and she was glad that he was coming home to-night. For the first time during the fifteen years of her marriage she experienced a vague uneasiness at his absence. A year ago she had not known a tremor of loneliness when he was away—but then the child was unborn. Now, in some subtle way, the child's existence was bound and rebound in Dudley's. The two stood together in her thoughts; she could not separate them—the child was but a smaller, a closer, a dearer Dudley—a Dudley of her dreams and visions, the ideal ending to life's realities.
As she sat beside the window, her eyes wandering from the sunset to the baby asleep in Delphy's lap, she wondered that she had never before suffered this incipient thrill of nervous fear. Was it that her affection for her child had revivified all lesser emotions? Or was it that with supreme love came the vague, invincible perception of supreme loss? Did great happiness bear within itself the visible reflection of great sorrow? Her life before this had been more peaceful—it had been also less complete. With the coming of her heart's desire had awakened her heart's inquietude—both had dawned after years of restless waiting and uncertain wandering. It was borne in upon her, with something like a pang, that the fulness of life had blossomed for her only when her first youth was withered, when she had long since relinquished high expectations or keen desire. She had set her young mind and her quick passion on a far-away good, she had shed vain tears over the lack of it; yet, in the end, she found compensation where she would least have sought it—in the things which made up her destiny. She had learned the wisdom of acceptance, and Fate had rewarded her, not by yielding to her what she had called her heart's necessity, but by fitting her heart to the necessity that was already hers. She had not known the fulfilment of her young ideals, but she was content at last with an existence which was a personal surrender to older realities. For herself she asked now only busy days of domestic interests and the unbroken serenity of middle age—but, despite herself, another life was before her, for she lived again in her child.
The twilight fell. She put her work aside, and, coming to the hearth rug, took the baby from Delphy's arms. He was in his night-dress, and his big blue eyes were drugged with sleep. As Eugenia took him he gave a whimpering cry and clutched her with his little hands before he nestled into the lace at her bosom.