He did not explain what that reason was, and Rosamund did not ask. There was a sort of wide and sweet tranquillity about her that evening. Dion noticed that it seemed to increase upon her, and about her, as the days passed by. She showed no sign of nervousness, had evidently no dread at all of bodily pain. Either she trusted in her splendid health, or she was so wrapped up in the thought of the joy of being a mother that the darkness to be passed through did not trouble her; or perhaps—he wondered about this—she was all the time schooling herself, looking up, in memory, to the columns of the Parthenon. He was much more strung up, much more restless and excitable than she was, but she did not seem to notice it. Always singularly unconscious of herself she seemed at this period to be also unobservant of those about her. He felt that she was being deliberately egoistic for a great reason, that she was caring for herself, soul and body, with a sort of deep and quiet intensity because of the child.
“She is right,” he said to himself, and he strove in all ways in his power to aid her beautiful selfishness; nevertheless sometimes he felt shut out; sometimes he felt as if already the unseen was playing truant over the seen. He was conscious of the child’s presence in the little house through Rosamund’s way of being before he saw the child. He wondered what other women were like in such periods, whether Rosamund was instinctively conforming to an ancient tradition of her sex, or whether she was, as usual, strongly individualistic. In many ways she was surely not like other women, but perhaps in these wholly natural crises every woman resembled all her sisters who were traveling towards the same sacred condition. He longed to satisfy himself whether this was so or not, and one Saturday afternoon, when Rosamund was resting in her little sitting-room with a book, and the Hermes watching over her, he bicycled to Jenkins’s gymnasium in the Harrow Road, resolved to put in forty minutes’ hard work, and then to visit his mother. Mrs. Leith and Rosamund seemed to be excellent friends, but Dion never discussed his wife with his mother. There was no reason why he should do so. On this day, however, instinctively he turned to his mother; he thought that she might help him towards a clearer knowledge of Rosamund.
Rosamund had long ago been formally made known to Bob Jenkins, Jim’s boxing “coach,” who enthusiastically approved of her, though he had never ventured to put his opinion quite in that form to Dion. Even Jenkins, perhaps, had his subtleties, those which a really good heart cannot rid itself of. Rosamund, in return, had made Dion known to her extraordinary friend, Mr. Thrush of Abingdon Buildings, John’s Court, near the Edgware Road, the old gentleman who went to fetch his sin every evening, and, it is to be feared, at various other times also, in a jug from the “Daniel Lambert.” Dion had often laughed over Rosamund’s “cult” for Mr. Thrush, which he scarcely pretended to understand, but Rosamund rejoiced in Dion’s cult for the stalwart Jenkins.
“I like that man,” she said. “Perhaps some day——” She stopped there, but her face was eloquent.
In his peculiar way Jenkins was undoubtedly Doric, and therefore deserving of Rosamund’s respect. Of Mr. Thrush so much could hardly be said with truth. In him there were to be found neither the stern majesty and strength of the Doric, nor the lightness and grace of the Ionic. As an art product he stood alone, always wearing the top hat, a figure Degas might have immortalized but had unfortunately never seen. Dion knew that Mr. Thrush had once rescued Rosamund in a fog and had conveyed her home, and he put the rest of the Thrush matter down to Rosamund’s genial kindness towards downtrodden and unfortunate people. He loved her for it, but could not help being amused by it.
When Dion arrived at the gymnasium, Jenkins was giving a lesson to a small boy of perhaps twelve years old, whose mother was looking eagerly on. The boy, clad in a white “sweater,” was flushed with the ardor of his endeavors to punch the ball, to raise himself up on the bar till his chin was between his hands, to vault the horse neatly, and to turn somersaults on the rings. The primrose-colored hair on his small round head was all ruffled up, perspiration streamed over his pink rosy cheeks, his eyes shone with determination, and his little white teeth were gritted as, with all the solemn intensity of childhood, he strove to obey on the instant Jenkins’s loud words of command. It was obvious that he looked to Jenkins as a savage looks to his Tribal God. His anxious but admiring mother was forgotten; the world was forgotten; Jenkins and the small boy were alone in a universe of grip dumb-bells, heavy weights, “exercisers,” boxing-gloves, horizontal bars, swinging balls and wooden “horses.” Dion stood in the doorway and looked on till the lesson was finished. It ended with a heavy clap on the small boy’s shoulders from the mighty paw of Jenkins, and a stentorian, “You’re getting along and no mistake, Master Tim!”
The face of Master Tim at this moment was a study. All the flags of triumph and joy were hung out in it and floated on the breeze; a soul appeared at the two windows shining with perfect happiness; and, mysteriously, in all the little figure, from the ruffled primrose-colored feathers of hair to the feet in the white shoes, the pride of manhood looked forth through the glowing rapture of a child.
“What a jolly boy!” said Dion to Jenkins, when Master Tim and his mother had departed. “It must be good to have a boy like that.”
“I hope you’ll have one some day, sir,” said Jenkins, speaking heartily in his powerful voice, but looking, for the moment, unusually severe.
He and Bert, his wife, had had one child, a girl, which had died of quinsy, and they had never had another.