“You oughtn’t to read, you ought to go to sleep,” said Dosia, with tender severity.
“I’m not going to read,” returned Lois pacifically. Her hand closed over the book, she smiled, and Dosia closed the door. Lois turned to the sleeping child with a peculiar delight in being quite alone with him—alone with him, to think.
The book was a novel of some forty years ago, called, as the title-page proclaimed, “The Woman’s Kingdom,” and written by Dinah Maria Mulock. A neighbor had brought it in to Lois during the first month of her convalescence—in all the time she had had it, she had never read any further than that title-page.
There is often more in the birth of a child than the coming of another son or daughter into the world. Between those forces of life and death a woman may also get her chance to be born anew, made over again, spiritually as well as physically; in those long, restful hours afterwards, when suspense is over and pain is over, and there is a freedom from household cares, and one is looked upon with renewed tenderness, the thoughts may flow over long, long ways. To face danger bravely in itself gives strength for the clearer vision, and a peculiarly loved child unlocks with its tiny hands springs unknown before.
Lois, though she had been a mother twice before, had never felt toward either of the other children at all as she did now toward this little boy. She could not bear to be parted from him. Somehow that terrible corrosive selfishness had been blessedly taken away from her—for a little while only? She only felt at first that she must not think of those horrible depths, for fear of slipping back into the pit again; even to think of the slimy powers of darkness gave them a fresh hold on one. She put off her return to that soul-embracing egotism. It was sweet to lie there and meet the tender gentleness of her husband’s gaze when he came home, and to talk to him about the baby as a child might talk about a new toy, though she could not but begin to perceive that she was as far, far out of his real life as if she had indeed been a child.
One evening he came in to sit by her,—her convalescence had been a long and dragging one,—and she had paused in the midst of telling him something to await an answer. None came. She spoke again, and raised herself to look. Then she saw that even within that brief space he had fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. Thoroughly exhausted! Everything proclaimed it—his attitude, grimly grotesque in the dim light, one leg stretched out half in front of the other, as he had dropped into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the face sharply upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows under his cheek-bones and in those lines that marked his temples. Divested of color and the transforming play of expression, he looked strangely old, terribly lifeless. He slept without moving,—almost, it seemed, without breathing,—while Lois, with a new dread, watched him with frightened, dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown like this? What unnoticed change had been at work? She called him again, but he did not hear; she stretched out her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him again; an icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. What if never, never, never——
Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying naturally, “Did you speak?”
“Oh, you frightened me so! Don’t go to sleep like that again,” said Lois, with a shaking voice. “Come here.”
He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his cheek close to hers with a rush of painful emotion. “Why, you mustn’t get worked up over a little thing like that,” he objected lightly, going out of the room afterwards with a reassuring smile at her, while she gazed after him with strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in months, she thought of him without any idea of benefit to herself.
The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the title arrested her attention oddly—“The Woman’s Kingdom.” Another phrase correlated with it in her memory—“Queen of the Home.” The home was supposed to be woman’s domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. The Woman’s Kingdom, Queen of the Home. Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby’s fingers; they kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She poor, bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a queen! Home and the heart of her husband—there lay her woman’s kingdom, her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none other; she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as her rule made it; she must be judged by her government—as she was queen enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words.