"I've made us a cup of tea, Mis' Sinclair, and set out a light lunch.
We'll both feel better for a bite."
Annabel shook her head. "I don't want--anything." It took an effort to stifle a frenzied appeal to be left to herself.
This was far from Mrs. West's thoughts. She creaked into the little room, her ample proportions making it seem more cramped and small than ever, and patted Annabel's shoulder.
"Oh, come now, Mis' Sinclair, I know just how you feel."--Never was boast vainer.--"But Diantha's going to come through this all right.
She's young and she's strong. The doctor says she's got everything in her favor."
Annabel's answer was a vague uncomprehending stare. Then she began to understand. Mrs. West supposed her consumed with anxiety for her daughter's safety, whereas the possibility that Diantha might die had hardly occurred to her. She found herself wondering if she were unlike all other women, an abnormality in her selfishness. In the larger matters Annabel had remained contemptuously indifferent to the opinion of her sex, though she would have found their criticism of her personal appearance disquieting. But now she was conscious of an unaccustomed sense of relief that Mrs. West could not read her thoughts.
"I don't want--anything," she repeated mechanically, and Thad's mother departed with obvious reluctance. In five minutes she was back with a cup of tea which Annabel swallowed in hopes of thus purchasing immunity from further kindly attentions. And Mrs. West, bearing away the empty tea-cup, carried too, a better opinion of Annabel Sinclair than she would have believed possible.
"I never thought she cared anything much for Diantha," she told Persis who had dropped in several times during the day to see how matters were progressing. "But I must say, I did her an injustice. She's been pretty nearly crazy all day. She looks like a ghost."
"Well, she's Diantha's mother when all's said and done," Persis responded. Happiness makes for tolerance. With all her charity for the wrong-doer, Persis had made an exception of Annabel Sinclair. But now the years of fatness, following instead of preceding the lean years, the overflowing fulness of her heart and life had taught her new indulgence. She was capable of believing that there was good in the woman.
The afternoon dragged cruelly. Now and then some faint sound reached Annabel, vaguely suggestive of the battle which must be waged for every new existence, and each time the sagging body of the woman stiffened, and her breath grew hurried. Once Thad passed her window, his young face set and white, and his eyes reddened as if from weeping. Annabel shrank away fearful that his glance might fall on her, but the fixed eyes of the young husband saw only his wife's girlish face as he had seen it last, colorless, quivering, undaunted.
It was not far from four o'clock when the sound of hurrying feet quickened Annabel's lagging pulses. A door shut quickly and then another. Some one was hurrying down the hall; some one who brought news. Annabel found herself on her feet. And then, instinctively she caught at the back of her chair to support herself, for the floor was undulating and the sunny room had grown dark.
Out of the shapeless blur in which her surroundings blended, a face took shape, the face of Mrs. West, wet with tears and radiant with smiles. It was she who had sped so lightly down the long hall as if joy had given wings to her feet.
"It's a boy!" She laughed out the three exultant words and hurried back to some interrupted task. Annabel continued to stand. When at length she released her grip of the chair, her fingers were numb and stiff. The thought crossed her mind that now she was at liberty to go home, since her grandson had come into the world, but the effort seemed beyond her strength. She sank into the chair again, half closing her eyes. The poignant pain of the past hours had changed to an overwhelming listlessness. She was too tired to think any longer, too tired even to suffer.
A brisk knock at the door roused her from her apathy sufficiently for a resentful wish that they would leave her to herself. Then the door opened and Persis entered. Her face wore the look that had impressed Annabel on the face of Mrs. West, that look of supreme satisfaction, blended with a curious, vicarious pride, and with it all, something that told of tears held back. Annabel's eyes went from that radiant look to the shawl-draped bundle in Persis' arms. She put out her hand as if to ward off a danger.
Persis halted, gazing in consternation at the wreck of Annabel. In that shallow face the record of mental anguish was so unmistakable that the other woman felt a pang of self-reproach.
"Here I've been leaving this poor little bundle of nerves to fight this thing through all alone. I'd ought to have known she'd be scaring herself into a conniption." As a reaction from the severity with which she dealt with her own thoughtlessness, Persis' voice, in addressing Annabel was as tender and caressing as if she strove to soothe a troubled child.
"Well, Mis' Sinclair, your worry's over. Diantha came through this fine, and before we know it, she'll be up and about and as lively as a cricket. But it's been a hard day for you same as for the rest of us.
The Lord asks a good deal of women, to help Him keep this old world a-going, but He's got His own way of making it up to 'em."
As if to give point to her words, Persis' eyes dropped to the bundle in her arms. She came a step nearer.
"I s'pose, of course, you're glad it's a boy. I don't know why it is, but you just can't help feeling tickled when the first baby's a boy.
Nine pounds, too. That's a grandson to be proud of."
"Don't! Don't! I don't want to see it."
Annabel's cry was involuntary, wrung from her by the realization of Persis' purpose. And Persis who had lifted the shawl that concealed the little face, let it fall again and stood staring.
"You don't want--to see the baby?"
The revulsion indicated by Annabel's attitude was a sufficient answer.
Persis crossed to the cot-bed and sat down. If there was a person on earth she cordially detested, it was Annabel Sinclair, yet the conviction that this poor counterfeit of a woman was in need of strength and sympathy was sufficient to thrust that old dislike into the background.
"I guess to-day's been pretty trying to your nerves, Mis' Sinclair.
But you'll feel better if you take a look at this nice boy. I've seen a good many of 'em first and last, and I told Diantha I'd never set eyes on a finer baby."
A curious distortion of Annabel's face broke off Persis' eulogy. "Are you feeling sick, Mis' Sinclair?" she asked in real alarm, thinking that she would never have given Annabel credit for this excess of material solicitude.
"Sick? Yes, I'm sick of everything. I'm glad that child's a boy.
Those people that drown the girl babies like kittens, are in the right of it. No woman ought to live beyond thirty."
"Some of us," remarked Persis, recovering herself with difficulty, "would have missed a good deal at that rate." But her lips curled slightly. She was beginning to understand and to acquit herself of past injustice.
Annabel had reached a point where speech was a necessity. For years, she had returned Persis' dislike with the added venom of a small nature. But at this moment, when an outpouring of confidence seemed essential, she knew there was no one to whom she could speak so freely as to this woman she had hated.
"Life's cruel, cruel! It promises us women everything. And then it cheats us and tricks us and takes away all that it gave, one thing after another. It's like bleeding to death, losing your beauty little by little, fighting your hardest and knowing you've got to be beaten in the end. When I was a child in bed I used to think I heard footsteps coming along the hall, slow and stealthy, and I'd lie there trembling and quaking, afraid to open my eyes. That's the way I've been listening to old age, creeping on me--for the last ten years."
"And if only you'd got your courage up to opening your eyes when you were a little, trembly thing, scared of those footsteps, like enough all you'd have seen beside your bed was your mother smiling down on you."
Annabel looked at the speaker without replying. Her look offered little encouragement for Persis to continue, but she needed no such incentive.
"You talk about life's being cruel. Why, you poor little soul, you don't know what life's like. You've never given it a chance. You haven't played fair."
For years Persis had acknowledged to a desire to give Annabel Sinclair "a good talking to." On various occasions she had uttered truths that had cut like knives. She had the same truths to utter now but the spirit had altered.
"I guess every girl that was ever born liked to have men courting her and ready to fight one another for a kind word from her. That's nature. But it ain't nature to have it last, Mis' Sinclair. And that's where you made your mistake. You wanted to keep right on pretending it was May after it got along to August or so."
Something she saw in the poor harassed face caused her to change her position slightly, so that she could pat the listless hand of Diantha's mother while she spoke.
"Life ain't cruel, you poor soul! It comes along with both hands full.
It says to the little girl, 'Come, drop that doll-baby, I've got something better than that. Here's a lover for you.' And then it says to the girl that's picking and choosing among her beaux, 'Drop that flirting, I've got something better for you. Here's a husband and a home!' And so it goes. Instead of getting poorer all the time, we're getting richer."
She looked at Annabel tentatively. She was not altogether sure that her eloquence was having effect. But as Annabel sat in an attitude of expectancy, her face turned toward her monitor, though her eyes were downcast, Persis tried again.
"I don't say Thomas and I haven't missed a lot, I'm not belittling youth and its love and its hopes. But I do say that I wouldn't change this last year of my life for any that might have been. Why, when I wake up in the morning, my head's full of the children, thinking of 'em and planning for 'em and sometimes worrying about 'em. It needs a little tart taste, sometimes, to bring out the sweet. Thomas and I have spent hours, trying to decide whether we'll make a doctor out of Algie, or a civil engineer, and we know both of us, that when the time comes, he'll take the bit in his teeth and do as he likes. Only it's such fun planning it out. When I look back five years or ten, or twenty, for that matter, and see how my life has filled up and widened out, I feel real sorry for that little, young, silly Persis Dale who thought she was so happy and knew so little about it. If life takes with one hand, Mis' Sinclair, it gives with two, only you'll never find it out as long as you grip tight to what you've got."
She looked down on the bundle in her arms, and again her face was irradiated by a vivid tenderness, almost as if she had been mother of the child.
"Now, here's a case in point, Annabel Sinclair. Right here in my arms is a little lump of joy that ought to fill up your cup of happiness so full that it would spill over. Seems to me if this little mite belonged to me, if I knew my blood was in his veins, this town wouldn't be big enough to hold me. I love my five, dear knows, but there's a hurt in thinking that I'm never going to see the Dale stubbornness cropping out or any of the Hardin ways. But you haven't got that little nagging hurt to take off your joy, like a pinch in a pair of new shoes. It's all along of you that this boy's here."
As if dominated by the stronger will, Annabel's eyes turned toward the bundle. And inwardly praying that this was the moment for her _coup d'etat_, Persis started to her feet.
"I b'lieve that's Thad calling. 'Fraid like as not, that I'm going to kidnap his son and heir. You hold the baby, Mis' Sinclair, till I see what's wanted."
She had tucked the baby into the curve of his grandmother's arm before Annabel could protest, and she left the room without looking back.
Annabel, breathing fast, stared down into the little red face against her shoulder. Such a queer little face, wrinkled with the ponderous wisdom of the world it had so lately quitted, placid through ignorance of the new life into which it had entered. She could not turn away her eyes. And this being, newer than the morning paper and yet ancient as man, was flesh of her flesh.
The little, tightly clenched fists attracted her as irresistibly as the face. She surprised herself by poking one tentatively, and when the fingers opened and closed about hers, her lips parted as if to cry out.
She had not dreamed that there could be such tenacity in those wee fingers. It was uncanny to be thus gripped by a creature so intensely new. And Persis had said that this was one of Heaven's good gifts, a joy that might brim life's cup over.
The door opened and she raised her eyes. Her husband stood there, gravely intent. She had never looked less beautiful than in her pale disorder, but the pathos of her drooping figure and bewildered face touched him strangely. Or perhaps it was the child in her arms.
"It's holding to my finger, Stanley! See!" Annabel's features twisted in a strange distorted smile. "Our little grandchild."