I
When Susan left the shop and returned to her own house to make preparations for a visitor, she went unwillingly, postponing the hour that meant separation from the man she loved, making light of his anxiety, but secretly rejoicing in it. Her faithful heart dwelt with apprehension upon a future spent apart from Joe, apart from the excitements of the shop, a future of small things and small people. She tried to visualize herself as a mother and the vision was blurred. When she said rather timidly, "What will you do without me?" he had assured her with vain repetitions that he had more than enough to occupy his mind. The dolorous conclusion was inevitable. Joe could get along without a partner in the shop. But she could not conceive of life without him.
During this period of intermittent joys and fears, chasing each other daily and nightly through her brain, Susan was humorously conscious that Joe regarded the coming baby as his rather than hers. He would say, chuckling, "Well, Mrs. Q., how is my baby this morning? Any news of him?" The sex of the child was taken for granted. Susan had sufficient obstinacy and spirit to resent this cocksure attitude. From the first she maintained that it would be a girl. Mrs. Biddlecombe was much shocked at the intimate nature of conversations carried on before her. The good woman belonged to a generation which never mentioned babies till they lay in bassinettes, fit to be seen and worshipped by all the world. Quinney trampled upon these genteel sensibilities.
"The kid is comin'—ain't it?"
"We hope so," replied his mother-in-law austerely.
"We know it, old dear. Why not talk about it? Joe Quinney, junior! There you are!"
"It sounds so—indelicate."
"That be blowed for a tale! Lawsy, there's no saying what my son may not be. Think o' my brains and his dear little mother's looks." Worse followed. He began to call Susan "mother." Mrs. Biddlecombe protested in vain. Laburnum Row laughed openly. Everybody knew! One terrible morning, a disgusting small boy shouted after her, "Hullo, gran'ma!"
Mrs. Biddlecombe, moreover, had no sympathy with Susan's ardent desire to remain near her husband, intimately connected with the things which interested him so tremendously. She lacked the quickness of wit to perceive what Susan instinctively recognized, the increasing and ever-absorbing love that this queer young man manifested for his business. In that business, in the unwearying quest for beautiful objects, the wife foreshadowed a rival, a rival the more to be feared because it was amorphous, senseless, chaotic. She took little pleasure in the beautiful furniture which filled the Dream Cottage, because she could never feel that it was hers. She would have chosen things which he despised as rubbish, but they would have been very dear to her. In a real sense Joe's furniture stood massively between husband and wife. Again and again when she was hungering for soft words and caresses, he would stand in front of the Chippendale china cabinet, and apostrophize it with ardour, calling upon Susan to share his enthusiasm, slightly irritable with her when she failed to perceive the beauty in what she summed up in her own mind as "sticks and stones." She hated to see him stroke fine specimens of porcelain. She came within an ace of smashing a small but valuable Ming jar because he kissed it. Her condition must be taken into account, but above and beyond any physical cause soared the conviction, that her Joe's business might become the greatest thing in his life, growing, as he predicted it would, to such enormous proportions that there would be no room for her. Once she prayed that his soaring ambitions might be clipped by a merciful Providence. She rose from her knees trembling at her audacity, telling herself that she was disloyal. And then she laughed, half hysterically, supremely sensible that her Joe would travel far upon the road he had chosen, and that it behoved her to quicken her steps, and not to lag behind, for it was certain that he would expect her to keep up.
She had to pass some lonely hours. Mrs. Biddlecombe neglected no duties connected with her own house, and the work at the Dream Cottage was done meticulously by the competent servant whom Mrs. Biddlecombe had installed there, and over whom she exercised a never-flagging vigilance. Quinney issued orders that the mistress was to be spared. She was quite capable of doing many things which the robust Maria would not allow her to do. Even the delight of sewing upon minute garments was circumscribed. Quinney, after secret "colloguing" with Mrs. Biddlecombe, prepared a surprise. An amazing basket arrived from London, embellished with pale blue ribbon, and filled with a layette fit—so the advertisement said—for "a little lord."