Virginia Part 25

In the afternoon Mrs. Pendleton came over, but the two women were so busy arranging the furniture in its proper place, and laying away Oliver's and the children's things in drawers and closets, that not until the entire house had been put in order, did they find time to sit down for a few minutes in the nursery and discuss the future of Susan.

"I believe John Henry will want to marry her and go to live at the Treadwells', if Susan will let him," remarked Mrs. Pendleton.

"How on earth could he get on with Uncle Cyrus?" Ever since her marriage Virginia had followed Oliver's habit and spoken of Cyrus as "uncle."

"Well, I don't suppose even John Henry could do that, but perhaps he thinks anything would be better than losing Susan."

"And he's right," returned Virginia loyally, while she got out her work-bag and began sorting the array of stockings that needed darning.

"Do you know, mother, Oliver seems to think that I might go to New York with him."

"And leave the children, Jinny?"

"Of course I've told him that I can't, but he's asked me two or three times to let you look after them for a day or two."

"I'd love to do it, darling--but you've never spent a night away from one of them since Lucy was born, have you?"

"No, and I'd be perfectly miserable--only I can't make Oliver understand it. Of course, they'd be just as safe with you as with me, but I'd keep imagining every minute that something had happened."

"I know exactly how you feel, dear. I never spent a night outside my home after my first child came until you grew up. I don't see how any true woman could bear to do it, unless, of course, she was called away because of a serious illness."

"If Oliver were ill, or you, or father, I'd go in a minute unless one of the children was really sick--but just to see a play is different, and I'd feel as if I were neglecting my duty. The funny part is that Oliver is so wrapped up in this play that he doesn't seem to be able to get his mind off it, poor darling. Father was never that way about his sermons, was he?"

"Your father never thought of himself or of his own interests enough, Jinny. If he ever had a fault, it was that. But I suppose he approaches perfection as nearly as a man ever did."

Slipping the darning gourd into the toe of one of Lucy's little white stockings, Virginia gazed attentively at a small round hole while she held her needle arrested slightly above it. So exquisitely Madonna-like was the poise of her head and the dreaming, prophetic mystery in her face, that Mrs. Pendleton waited almost breathlessly for her words.

"There's not a single thing that I would change in Oliver, if I could,"

she said at last.

"It is so beautiful that you feel that way, darling. I suppose all happily married women do."

A week later, across Harry's birthday cake, which stood surrounded by four candles in the centre of the rectory table, Virginia offered her cheerful explanation of Oliver's absence, in reply to a mild inquiry from the rector. "He was obliged to go to New York yesterday about the rehearsal of 'The Beaten Road,' father. We were both so sorry he couldn't be here to-day, but it was impossible for him to wait over."

"It's a pity," said the rector gently. "Harry will never be just four years old again, will you, little man?" Even the substantial fact that Oliver's play would, it was hoped, provide a financial support for his children, did not suffice to lift it from the region of the unimportant in the mind of his father-in-law.

"But he'll have plenty of other birthdays when papa will be here,"

remarked Virginia brightly. Though she had been a little hurt to find that Oliver had arranged to leave home the night before, and that he had appeared perfectly blind to the importance of his presence at Harry's celebration, her native good sense had not permitted her to make a grievance out of the matter. On her wedding day she had resolved that she would not be exacting of Oliver's time or attention, and the sweetness of her disposition had smoothed away any difficulties which had intervened between her and her ideal of wifehood. From the first, love had meant to her the opportunity of giving rather than the privilege of receiving, and her failure to regard herself as of supreme consequence in any situation had protected her from the minor troubles and disillusionments of marriage.

"It is too bad to think that dear Oliver will have to be away for two whole weeks," said Mrs. Pendleton.

"Is he obliged to stay that long?" asked the rector, sympathetically.

Never having missed an anniversary since the war, he could look upon Oliver's absence as a fit subject for condolence.

"He can't possibly come home until the play is produced, and that won't be for two weeks yet," replied Virginia.

"But I thought it rested with the actors now. Couldn't they go on just as well without him?"

"He thinks not, and, of course, it is such a great play that he doesn't want to take any risks with it."

"Of course he doesn't," a.s.sented Mrs. Pendleton, who had believed that the stage was immoral until Virginia's husband began to write for it.

"I know he'll come back the very first minute that he can get away,"

said Virginia with conviction, before she stooped to comfort Harry, who was depressed by the discovery that he was not expected to eat his entire cake, but instantly hopeful when he was promised a slice of sister Lucy's in the summer.

Late in the afternoon, when the children, warmly wrapped in extra shawls by Mrs. Pendleton, were led back through the cold to the house in Prince Street, one and all of the party agreed that it was the nicest birthday that had ever been. "I like grandma's cake better than our cake,"

announced Harry above his white m.u.f.fler. "Why can't we have cake like that, mamma?"

He was trotting st.u.r.dily, with his hand in Virginia's, behind the perambulator, which contained a much m.u.f.fled Jenny, and at his words Mrs. Pendleton, who walked a little ahead, turned suddenly and hugged him tight for an instant.

"Just listen to the darling boy!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice.

"Because n.o.body else can make such good cake as grandma's," answered Virginia, quite as pleased as her mother. "And she's going to give you one every birthday as long as you live."

"Can't I have another birthday soon, mamma?"

"Not till after sister Lucy's. You want sister Lucy to have one, don't you? and dear little Jenny?"

"But why can't I have a cake without a birthday, mamma?"

"You may, precious, and grandma will make you one," said Mrs. Pendleton, as she helped Marthy wheel the perambulator over the slippery crossing and into the front gate.

On the hall table there was a telegram from Oliver, and Virginia tore it open while her mother and Marthy unfastened the children's wraps.

"He's at the Hotel Bertram," she said joyously, "and he says the rehearsals are going splendidly."

"Did he mention Harry's birthday?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, trying to hide the instinctive dread which the sight of a telegram aroused in her.

"He must have forgotten it. Can't you come upstairs to the nursery with us, mother?"

"No, your father is all alone. I must be getting back," replied Mrs.

Pendleton gently.

An hour or two later, when Virginia sat in her rocking-chair before the nursery fire, with Harry, worn out with his play and forgetful of the dignity of his four years, asleep in her lap, she opened the telegram again and reread it hungrily while the light of love shone in her face.

She knew intuitively that Oliver had sent the telegram because he had not written--and would not write, probably, until he had finished with the hardest work of his play. It was an easy thing to do--it took considerably less of his time than a letter would have done; but she had inherited from her mother the sentimental vision of life which unconsciously magnifies the meaning of trivial attentions. She looked through her emotions as through a prism on the simple fact of his telegraphing, and it became immediately transfigured. How dear it was of him to realize that she would be anxious until she heard from him! How lonely he must be all by himself in that great city! How much he must have wanted to be with Harry on his birthday! Sitting there in the fire-lit nursery, her heart sent out waves of love and sympathy to him across the distance and the twilight. On the rug at her feet Lucy rocked in her little chair, crooning to her doll with the beginnings of the mother instinct already softening her voice, and in the adjoining room Jenny lay asleep in her crib while the faithful Marthy watched by her side. Beyond the window a fine icy rain had begun to fall, and down the long street she could see the lamps flickering in revolving circles of frost. In the midst of the frozen streets, that little centre of red firelight separated her as completely from the other twenty-one thousand human beings among whom she lived as did the glow of personal joy that suffused her thoughts. From the dusk below she heard the tapping of a blind beggar's stick on the pavement, and the sound made, while it lasted, a plaintive accompaniment to the lullaby she was singing. "Two whole weeks," she thought, while her longing reached out to that unknown room in which she pictured Oliver sitting alone. "Two whole weeks. How hard it will be for him." In her guarded ignorance of the world she could not imagine that Oliver was suffering less from this enforced absence from all he loved than she herself would have suffered had she been in his place. Of course, men were different from women--that ancient dogma was embodied in the leading clause of her creed of life; but she had always understood that this difference vanished in some miraculous way after marriage. She knew that Oliver had to work, of course--how otherwise could he support his family?--but the idea that his work might ever usurp the place in his heart that belonged to her and the children would have been utterly incomprehensible to her had she ever thought of it. Jealousy was an alien weed, which could not take root in the benign soil of her nature.

For a week there was no letter from Oliver, and at the end of that time a few lines scrawled on a sheet of hotel paper explained that he spent every minute of his time at the theatre.

"Poor fellow, it's dreadfully hard on him, isn't it?" Virginia said to her mother, when she showed her the imposing picture of the hotel at the head of his letter.

There was no hint of compa.s.sion for herself in her voice. Her pity was entirely for Oliver, constrained to be away for two whole weeks from his children, who grew more interesting and delightful every day that they lived. "Harry has gone into the first reader," she added, turning from the storeroom shelves on which she was laying strips of white oilcloth.

"He will be able to read his lesson to Oliver when he comes home."

"I have always understood that your father could read his Bible at the age of four," remarked Mrs. Pendleton, who pa.s.sionately treasured this solitary proof of the rector's brilliancy.

"I am afraid Harry is backward. He hates his letters--especially the letter A--so much that it takes me an hour sometimes to get him to say it after me. My only comfort is that Oliver says he couldn't read a line until he was over seven years old. Would you scallop this oilcloth, mother, or leave it plain?"

"I always scallop mine. Mrs. Treadwell must be better, Jinny; Susan sent me a dessert yesterday."