I knew what he meant. Have we not all dreamed it differently? And then we sat thinking of the Great Dream which we had had and lost. For there was a time, when Pelleas could model and I could write so that a few were deceived, that the Great Dream for one radiant year was in our home and went away when little Cedric died. In all the years since then we have gone wondering where he may be now, and where now, without us. For he was so very tiny when he left us; he could hardly take a step alone even by clinging to my finger, with Pelleas’ hands outstretched before him. I think it is partly lest he be needing us as he needed us then that we are never very far from him in thought, and that night we talked long of him until one by one all the other shadows went away in the presence of his little figure on our hearth.
So we were sitting with “Do you remember?” and “But do you remember?” on our lips when the door-bell rang and Nichola came upstairs to answer it, talking all the way. We wondered somewhat, for we have no unexpected visitors and no small excitements. We wondered the more when she appeared on the threshold of the drawing-room, bearing in her arms a white bundle which wore long and alarmingly fluffy skirts.
“Nichola!” we both cried; for you do not know how pleasant it is when the days grow colourless to have something happen which you yourself did not bring about. “Nichola! What is it?”
“It’s a babby,” Nichola informed us grimly, and laid it in Pelleas’ arms—face downward, he afterward told me. Then she beckoned me to the hall and I went, barely able to stand; for I was certain that it had been left in a basket on the steps with nothing but a locket.
“Nichola,” I begged, “whose baby?”
Nichola was bending over the bench where sat poor little Enid, crying helplessly.
“N—nobody told me,” Enid sobbed on my shoulder, “what it would be like to travel with a ten-weeks-old baby. He cried every m—mile of the way here—and he is a good baby, too!”
Bless the little mothers. I have never yet known one who would not assure you, though in the presence of a child exhibiting a most dreadful temper, that her baby was “usually so good, too.”
Together, though I suppose that I hindered far more than I helped, Nichola and I got Enid upstairs and put her in bed, dear little thing, hardly more than a baby herself for all her wise use of the most advanced baby terms. Nichola hurried downstairs and in a few minutes bustled back with a steaming bowl of some mysterious compound, hot and savoury in a bowl. How do some people always know what to bring you, hot and savoury, in a bowl? If I had gone down to the kitchen I protest that I could have devised nothing but eggs.
Nichola insisted on feeding Enid—the impertinent old woman had observed that when I am excited my hands tremble. But whose do not? As for Nichola I had often told her that she would not show emotion if an army with banners were to march in the front door. Instead of fear or sorrow or agitation Nichola’s way of emotion is anger; and I should have expected her to remind such an army of the purpose of the door mat.