“Come on, Matthew, Cecily’s tired and we must hurry.”
It was a strange convalescence and perhaps an unusually healthy one, for there was no excitement and a great deal of quiet. The brunt of the inconvenience now fell on the nurse and Cecily had only to lie for long, silent hours, thinking over the whole wonderful event. She listened to the voices of the children outside her window, marveling that they had been born just as her child was born, and the roots of that solidarity of motherhood which all mothers feel for each other began to grow in her. She had come to that stage in marriage when the mysteries are shared, not with one other individual, but with a whole sex. Dimly the great expansiveness of motherhood began to dawn upon her mind.
All this expressed itself not only in her dreaming, but in her curiosity. She plied the nurse with questions. Physiology and psychology of other mothers fascinated her. The cases of the nurse, in so far as she would talk about them, were an endless source of interest. Dick joined her in her interest. Step by step they went over the story of the birth again and again. But then Dick left it and went to town, carrying with him the consciousness of his fatherhood, to be sure, but temporarily overlaying that interest with business and masculine contact. Cecily lay in bed and thought and talked on about women and mothers. She had not the slightest intention of playing upon her illness. She was quick to feel her energy coming back and rejoiced in it. There was not a suggestion of querulousness in her manner. That she took the luxury and the petting which surrounded her as things natural to her was not to be wondered at.
But there was a great deal of praising and petting, and while Dick was triumphant he was also surrounded by an atmosphere that made him feel vaguely apologetic for having to undergo so little inconvenience himself. He was ready enough to admit the apparent unfairness of the situation. Not that it had ever struck him before. If he had considered it at all before his marriage he would have said that women had to have children, but men had to rustle to support them and called it fair enough. In the face of his personal situation it seemed different. Cecily, frail and pitiable, seemed indeed to be bearing the heavy end.
It was Fliss who got a real sociological slant on the situation. She visited Cecily’s house before Cecily returned to Carrington, ostensibly to return a scarf which she had borrowed of Cecily for the eventful ride, but really to see and have a gossip with Ellen. Ellen was scrupulous. She would not join Fliss in the living-room and Fliss was compelled to sit in Cecily’s room while Ellen polished the furniture. Ellen was very much excited about all that had happened—a little disappointed at not having been nearer the center of action herself, but determined to make up for that by making Cecily’s homecoming as comfortable as possible. The baby having been born, the pink afghan had been hastened to completion and now lay in state on the foot of the crib.
“Poor Mrs. Harrison,” said Ellen, “she’s been through a lot, hasn’t she?”
Fliss shrugged her shoulders in impatience. “You all make me sick,” she said; “she hasn’t been through more than any other woman, has she?”
But she gave Ellen no chance to answer.
“She had a bad time for twenty-four hours—no, about twelve hours. And for that the whole town sits back and gasps with pity, because it’s Cecily—Cecily who’s been used to ‘everything.’ What got on my nerves was to see what all women had to suffer. But I don’t see that Cecily hasn’t got it so much easier than most people that she doesn’t need my pity or any one else’s. Nurses and doctors and silk quilts and embroidered layettes take a good deal of sting out of having babies, I should think. And Dick acting as if he ought to grovel in the earth because his wife presented him with a baby! I dropped in to see May Robinson on the way here to-day. She’s expecting another and doing her own housework. And her husband is on the road and only gets home for week ends. May isn’t being so darn coddled. She’s worried sick about how they’re going to afford the new one. I can’t say that I’m especially sorry for Cecily.”
Ellen gave the dressing table a last flourishing polish and took refuge in her usual philosophy.