So, being unregenerate, we hesitated no longer. And Pelleas sat beside me, and the baby drank with little soft, shuddering breaths at the painful memory of how hungry he really had been. I bent above him and so did Pelleas, our heads quite close together as we watched him, and heard the little soft noises and sighs and met the eyes’ grave, wondering criticism. So long, so long it had been since I had seen that one serious eye lifted to mine as a little face lay against my breast.
Pelleas put out one finger and the funny little hand caught it and clung to it. Pelleas wrinkled his eyes at the corners and smiled up at me—I had almost forgotten how he used to do that and then wait for me to tell him that at that rate I could never get Cedric to sleep. When Pelleas did that now we sat silent; for very little babies are never unlike, and if I had really let myself I might have imagined and so I think might Pelleas have imagined ... that which for more than forty years we have only dreamed.
At last the baby moved his head, gurgled a brief grace, stared up at us unwinkingly, and then wrinkled his face astoundingly. Pelleas rose and looked wildly about for matches. One would have said that we were fugitives from justice crouching behind a panel and that our safety depended upon keeping that baby quiet during the passing of the men-at-arms. I cannot tell how it is with others, but when one is seventy a baby affects one like this and to prevent it crying seems all the law and a fair proportion of the prophets. So that when Pelleas came with a box of paraffin matches and lighted whole handfuls before Enid’s baby’s eyes I said very little; for he did stop crying, though he looked at these humble pyrotechnics somewhat haughtily and as if he knew more about them than he cared to give out.
The stair door does not creak, and this time Nichola was quite in the kitchen before we heard her. She looked at us once and then hurried to the other side of the room and busied herself at the dresser. We have seldom seen Nichola laugh but, if it were not that we cannot imagine her laughing, I would have thought and Pelleas would have thought that her voice sounded ever so slightly muffled.
“Its mother wants it right straight off,” she remarked, with her back toward us.
We rose promptly, and meekly made our way upstairs. Old Nichola dictates to us all day long in matters in which, as I think, we are really far wiser than she; how then should we not yield in crises of which we may be supposed to know nothing? Though I am bound to confess that save in matters of boiling I felt myself as wise as little Enid who, as I have said, is a baby herself. And this suggests something about which I have often wondered, namely, when the actual noon of motherhood may be? For I protest it seems to me that all the mothers of my acquaintance are either themselves babies, or else I catch myself thinking that they are too old and even spinsterish in their notions to be able perfectly to bring up a child. Yet it cannot very well be that I was the only mother neither too young nor too old to train youth properly.
I laid the little thing in Enid’s bed, and Enid smiled—that tender, pitiful, young-mother smile which somehow breaks one’s heart no matter how happy the young mother may be. But I was certain that the baby would disturb her. And an hour later while the doctor was with her an idea came to me that set me in a delicious flutter. I had forgotten that there are such sweet excitements in the world. I hugged the hope in silence for a moment and then shared it with Pelleas.
“Suppose,” I said, “that Enid should need her rest to-night?”
I looked at him tentatively, expecting him to understand at once as he almost never fails to do. I did not remember that it is far easier to understand in matters of design, rhythm and the like, which had occupied us these many years, than to adjust one’s self without preparation to the luminous suggestion which I was harbouring.
“I hope that she will have a good night,” Pelleas advanced, with appalling density.