As for Pelleas and me we could hardly wait to go upstairs. Of course Nichola had to know; she brought up the milk and the alcohol lamp and we were obliged to tell her. To tell Nichola that you mean to do anything which she considers foolish is very like a confession that your whole point of view is ignorant and diseased. Still, in some fashion, Pelleas and I together told her. Our old servant regarded us with the disapprobation which it is her delight not to disguise. Then on her brown fingers she checked matters off.
“No sleep for neither one of you,” she cast up the account. “Headaches to-morrow all day. Death o’ cold dancin’ in an’ out o’ bed. An’ a smothered babby by mornin’.”
“O, no, no, Nichola,” said we, gently but sweepingly.
I brought the baby in our room to undress him. Our room was cheerful and warm. An open fire was burning; and Pelleas had lighted all the candles as we will do on the rare occasions when we are dressing for some great event. On a table beside the bed stood the alcohol lamp and the glasses and the baby’s bottle—I had not even mentioned lime water and boiled bottles to Enid—and strange enough they looked where only my Bible and my medicine have lived for so long. The baby was asleep when we took him from Enid, but he waked and smiled impartially and caught at the air in perfect peace. I took off the little garments, feeling all the old skill come back to my hands idle to all such sweet business for more than forty years. Pelleas insisted on drawing off the tiny socks and stockings and when I saw the little feet in his palm I could almost have believed, for one swift moment, that the years had indeed rolled back. Then we wrapped him warmly and laid him in the great bed. And Pelleas spent a long while happily tucking in and tucking down and pretending to be very useful.
We had thought to read for a little while as is our wont and we did try to do so; but neither of us could keep our eyes anywhere near the book or could listen to the other read aloud. For the unwonted sound of that soft breathing was wholly distracting. And once a little hand was thrown up over the edge of the covers. What did we care about the sculptures at Ægina then?
Nichola looked in.
“Best leave a lamp burnin’,” she said crossly. “An’ if it should cry, you call me.”
By which, as Pelleas said afterward, she by no means intended to provide for the possible emotion of the lamp.
I was longing to feel that little head in the hollow of my arm. I laid it there presently and tucked my hand between the two pillows as I had been wont and held away the covering from the baby’s face. There was the fine dark hair, and there was the tiny hand uplifted and—as I live!—there was the identical ruffle of lace which had always used to bother about the little chin. In that first ecstatic moment I looked up at Pelleas almost frightened, half-expecting the buoyant, youthful face and the dear eyes that were wont to look down upon Cedric and me. And the dear eyes smiled, for they have never changed.
I lay very still listening to that quiet breathing, to the rustle and turning which is a tender language of its own. When one is seventy and closes one’s eyes it is wonderful how the whole world grows youthful. And when I had almost dozed that tender rustling brought me back so happily that I could hardly tell which was memory of that other little head upon my arm and which was now. At midnight and twice later when the baby’s food had to be warmed it was I who did this, and the old familiar helplessness of Pelleas in this little presence delighted me beyond measure. Though when the baby grew impatient and cried, Pelleas valiantly lighted matches before him, and he fell silent and even smiled, and slept again. I record it as a mere matter of history that in the intervals of these ceremonies I had not slept for a moment. For there had come thronging back such a company of memories, such a very flight of spirits of the old delight of our wonderful year when there was Cedric, that the world had no room for sleep at all. Sleep! I do not suppose that any one would chide me for being wakeful at a ball? And nothing in the world could have been so delightful to me as were those hours when that little head lay on my arm.