“She must have a violent curiosity,” thought Lily, “to be staying up all night.”
Thérèse, in the black shadow of the house, began to pray, as if it were still not too late for a miracle. She had never been religious, but like Voltaire she believed in trying everything.... After she had prayed for a time she grew hungry, took another biscuit from the reticule and went into the drawing-room for a glass of champagne. So it happened that before she was able to return to her watching and praying the door of the pavilion opened and the tiny lights that in the darkness marked the positions of Callendar and Rebecca moved hastily in its direction.
In the doorway stood Hattie, larger than either of them, red-faced, triumphant and with a wild light in her eyes. As first Rebecca and then Callendar emerged from the shadows, she said, “It is all over.... Everything is fine.... It is a boy!”
The news was borne by Rebecca into the drawing-room where Thérèse in her excitement put down her glass of champagne into sheer space instead of on the table, leaving it to break and spill its contents over the Aubusson carpet. On short fat legs she waddled through the window to the pavilion where Hattie, who had in the excitement of the moment forgotten her hatred, was delivering to Callendar a detailed and vivid account of the accouchement.
Thérèse forgot even her English. “Eet ees a boy,” she squealed. “Eet ees a boy. God is good. He has answered my prayers ... and what is it he weighs?”
“Seven pounds,” replied Hattie. “A fine baby, though none of my children weighed less than ten.”
A kind of hysteria swept them all. The waiting was over. Thérèse had an heir, Hattie had a grandchild and Callendar, at last, a son whom he would perhaps never possess as his own. From a window above their heads, the sound of a cracked shrill voice shot at them.
“Is the child born? What is it?” ... And then with irritation. “For Heaven’s sake!”
It was Gramp. Lily answered him, and the bony head was withdrawn again, the light extinguished and the room left to silence.
They must all see the child. They must come to the very door of the pavilion where Hattie, holding them at bay like a royal nurse exhibiting the heir to the populace, thrust toward them a lusty, tomato-colored child which appeared to cry, “Ala-as! Ala-as! Ala-as!” over and over again, monotonously. She allowed no one to touch it, not even old Thérèse who, kept at bay by the threatening manner of the royal nurse, bent over it murmuring, “The darling! Isn’t he beautiful? The precious darling! Qu’il est mignon! And he looks for all the world like Richard, the precious darling.”