But if he was going in for the correct thing, why on earth did he insist upon marrying me? Because I never was the correct thing, and he fell it love with me when he was quite old enough to know better; and after his friends had for years reckoned him as a fastidious, foreordained bachelor; he says because I was so wholly unlike the young ladies of his generation that he was surprised out of himself. And mamma told him all my faults that he didn't know already, and how people had insisted before upon marrying me, and two or three times I had been silly enough to half think I would let them, and then backed out and vowed I would have no husband but Art—and was generally so impressed with the risks he ran that I believe she even wept over his prospective unhappiness. But he would have his way; he didn't want a housekeeper; he didn't want a well informed young lady; his shirt-buttons and stocking-darning weren't likely to depend upon his wife; he should hate a patient Grizzle; he didn't marry for his friends—you can imagine the rash arguments. But I gave him a last chance of escape, for the night before we were married; when I'd given away all my old clothes, and the license was bought, the ring in his breast-pocket, and the wedding breakfast being laid in the next room, I said to him before all of them in papa's study:
"Ronayne, don't you want one more chance of freedom? Are you frightened about to-morrow morning, and the pell-mell household mamma promises you? Because if you are, I'll let you off now. You may run away in the night. I'll be a forsaken maiden, and papa shan't have the loch dragged, or advertise a 'Mysterious and Heart-Rending Disappearance.'"
"Too late. It's a hopeless case. I'm much too far gone for that. And I'm not going to help you to get rid of me, Mistress Lil."
I was frightened rather, and then and there I made papa give me a five-pound note to run away from Ronayne with in case I found, during our wedding journey, that I'd made a mistake and Art was my only true husband after all. Ronayne added five pounds more so that I could run away first-class, and have something with which to bribe accomplices! And that ten pounds is in my jewel-case now, and I think I shall keep it for my daughter, and give it her on her wedding-day as a reserve fund, in case she needs it as her mother once pretended to fear she herself might do.
However, for once I was discreet, and answered Mrs. Malise that I should like to come, but must see my husband before promising ourselves. Then I asked to see my small friend; but his mother, consulting her watch, begged me to excuse his non-appearance to-day, for this was just the moment when his nurse would be laying him down for his nap; and though often he would not sleep at all, yet system was everything, and he had to lie in his little bed two hours, though his eyes were broad open all the while.
"But will he lie there so long without crying?"
"Oh, two or three times he nearly cried himself into spasms because he was not taken up; but once he found he could not conquer Johanna he gave up trying, and now lies peaceably enough. He had to learn early that there are things more important in the world than his little self. Nothing do I object to more than a household revolving around children as a centre. Marriage ought to double powers—make people unselfish; while, as a rule, it only enlarges the sphere of egotistic concentration and absorption. If I gave up my time and thoughts to Mill (we've named him for this generation's great English apostle of liberty), as ordinary mothers do, it would seem to me a wickedness. But I scarcely find him the least hindrance. I have begun to speak a little in our suffrage meetings this winter, and have been away a good deal from home for that purpose—once for three weeks at Liverpool and in the north of Ireland."
"But you do not mean without your baby?"
"Oh, certainly. He is only a little animal as yet, requiring animal cares which I can provide without making the sacrifice of ability for higher work. Johanna attends to him far better than I could, and is not above such uses. I believe in economizing forces. By and by, when his intellect begins to develop, he will be far more interesting to me, and I shall be of use to him."
"You weaned him, then, very early?"