As the time of her deliverance from the first born approached, a minor note of quiet gayety modified the harsher noises of life. It was as if the child, which long since had begun to move and stir in the womb, had begun to prevail, and to insist upon a smiling interpretation and a cheerful attitude. The atmosphere of children, in which our relation has existed for an eternity, began to form before the first of our four children was born. As we both together sometimes felt the pulsations of the new life, and she the springing within and the urge and the movement it was the faint suggestion as of a bouncing little cherub playing with his blocks about the room or trying to dive through the window pane! And we would smile together, she one of those long, slow, tender smiles which went through her whole body and soul, and completely satisfied her, and I would smile more quickly, a smile tending to translate itself into a more strenuous expression and a forbidden embrace!
And slowly and richly, like a well-filled argosy, she would sometimes move with me to the café for dinner, and throughout our talk, or more exactly my talk, the unborn would have its effect. It was not like the old days of my pre-nuptial wooing when my words flowed in torrential masses and the atmosphere was filled with the excitement of half ideas and amorous hopes. Into these was introduced a subtle modification. The shadow of the child was cast on the high lights like gray on a water color, bringing in a transfused softening. And my male companions who came alone or with their wives to our little apartment, underwent the same influence, and there was not so much wine and whiskey consumed, and not so much boisterous talk about it and about. The unseen deeper meaning made its demand and insisted upon harmony in the surroundings.
Pregnancy came to seem to me such a normal, inevitable state that when I saw slim girls in the street or young married women who had not yet begun their process of completion, it was with a sort of pity. They seemed so wanting, so forlorn and hoping. Where was the male with his impregnating fierceness? Why should such wanting creatures go thinly about the world?
So natural and beautiful did her condition seem to me that when her pains began, they took me by surprise, though we had been expecting them for many days. It was as if some strange eruption, some volcanic accident had occurred, something quite contrary to the placid course of Nature. It was as exciting and direful as a Revolution! Yet, as I held her hands when the recurrent, ever-increasing pains returned, she in a strange and marvelous way, maintained that calm, that breathing, inexpressible quiet, at which I wonder and shall wonder until my dying day, even though, at times, it has almost driven me mad!
And when, sternly driven by the doctor into the adjoining room, I heard her low, unconscious moans, as the child came ripping from her womb,—deep, suffering sounds which did not seem to come from her but from the world in travail, from the body of Nature itself, sounds not so much human as cosmic, even then there was no turmoil nor violence nor nervousness. It seemed deeply impersonal,—the pain, the sound—to come from the depths of life and death, from a great, a terrible distance, and without petulance, too deep, too all-embracing to be noisy.
I afterwards knew that she had been at the point of death, that the hemorrhage which so often accompanies the first child-birth had nearly carried her into the unknown. She realized it at the time, felt herself going, going, but there was no alarm or uneasiness. It was like fading away into her elements, passing into something almost as much herself as what she knew, into something familiar, friendly; going out, but not going out into the cold; perhaps into the cool, the moist, the colorful, pleasing half-light, half-life, which lacks nervousness and pain—the elementary, the elemental, the Cosmic, lacking the meaningless stridency of civilization, possessing the long, quiet line of primitiveness! She was so civilized that she could easily dispense with civilization, so sophisticated that she could quietly welcome the approach of the uttermost simple, the dissolving into the elements of existence!
How I loved her, how I admired her! Beyond everything else how I liked her! She pleased my taste so utterly. She thrilled me with excited pleasure even at the moment when I feared for her life! As I heard the sharp cry of the new-born, like a clear figure in the foreground against the deep meaning of the mother’s impersonal silence, and rushing into the room, saw the strange struggling baby brandished aloft by the doctor, and the pale face of the woman in the bed, the danger of it all, the beauty of it all, almost overpowered me.
And then for days and days I rushed about, doing meaningless but necessary things; prodding the strangely stupid nurse, fiercely demanding of her punctuality and carefulness; alert, restless, awake, watchful, untiring, but always with a deep impatience, always feeling myself inessential, trivial, doing these necessary errands, but withheld from her, not able to commune with her, not able to be a part of her; having no longer any relation with her, a mere spectator of her importance, not an integral part of it!
I wonder if I have not been a mere spectator all my life!—a super-heated observer? Have I ever been a part of her real life? Is not my recurrent feeling of almost intolerable loneliness an index, a sign of her remoteness? In her arms only have I been able to feel united with something not myself, bigger than myself, a part of something not myself, my larger self. Under the illusion of the senses and the amorous fancy I have felt a real bond. Was it, after all, merely an illusion? Who knows? Perhaps it was a real union, a real oneness, but with difficulty maintained, impossible to maintain; continuously, inevitably falling apart, slipping back again into tragic, hopeless separateness.