Their Child by Robert Herrick - HTML preview

VII

OLAF!”

There was a note of dread in her voice, which arrested the man’s footsteps.

“What?” he asked curtly.

“You will not leave me, now! You are not going away?”

“You can’t want me around much, after last night,” he answered hesitatingly.

“What do you mean?” she asked quickly, a flush coming to her face.

“There’s no use of going over it, is there? I began to drink, of course, because I was so damned blue about the boy and you. It seemed as if everything was helplessly mixed up, and there was no way of straightening it out. After all the fight I made to be something, and to win you, and to give you a good place in the world,—all that was suddenly smashed. I couldn’t stand sitting there and thinking of nothing but that. And when I looked about at those folks, and saw how gay and lively and light-hearted they were, I said to myself: ‘Why haven’t I a right to a good time, too? What’s the use of mulling over this black stuff in my mind?’ But I couldn’t make a big enough effort to keep away from it! I kept on thinking of you and little Oscar, with all those gay people talking and laughing and handsome women. ‘My God,’ I said to myself, ‘if I can’t stop thinking of this, I shall have to get up and go outside.’ So I took up my glass of champagne, which I hadn’t touched,—never drink it, as you remember; it was the stuff old Oscar used to start in with when he was on a blow-out—that is why I never could bear it.

“That first glass made everything easier and more natural. It untied the knots in my face. And another made things pleasant; well, there’s no use in going on! I made a beastly fool of myself, sang that fool song, disgraced you before all your friends. Showed them how you had married just a hand out of the mines! My God, I should think you’d want me to go away and never come back!”

He had dropped into a chair, and lay there limp, his head fallen forward upon his hands. She listened to him with increasing wonder, trying to comprehend the significance of his abasement. What was it which he made so much of? Singing a silly song, drinking too much wine. That was his man’s way of escape from the pain of living, which had fastened upon them both. Thus he had tried to live for himself and defy God to make him wretched!

And her way? She reddened with the shame of it, and was silent. Both of them, so she saw, had been trying to flee from the grief that had overtaken them; to take their lives out of the place of despair, away to some new peace and joy. She saw it now very clearly, and she knew suddenly that through that gate there was no escape for either of them. The trap that had caught them was set in the obscure past and was made secure.

“But you would not really leave me, Olaf? You could not. You could not! I and our child would follow you in your thoughts everywhere.”

She knelt beside him and took his head in her hands.

“I tried to run away, too. And I could not. Nor could you. Mine was so much worse than yours! I will tell you some day. Yours was nothing to me, nothing. Believe me. I think nothing of it, nothing more than if you spilled a glass of wine on my dress, or went out in the rain without your coat, or did something else foolish. Don’t think of that, Olaf! We have so much else to feel, you and I.”

“SHE KNELT BESIDE HIM AND TOOK HIS HEAD
 IN HER HANDS.”

She drew his head to her. She was his mother and yearned, and yet was afraid, also. The man’s tired eyes looked into her eyes. He, too, had suffered in his male way as she had suffered. About his face there was a look, wistful and young and tender, such as it had been in the past when she had loved him passionately. She kissed his lips, thus wiping away his self-contempt.

“Do you remember, Olaf?” she whispered. “Do you remember the night you carried me down the mountain, when the horse stumbled on the trail and you were afraid to trust him again? Your arms were a shield about my body. I want them now, my husband!”

He saw that black night, the slipping sand and rocks beneath his feet, the precious body in his arms, the white face upturned to his. When he could go no farther safely, they had camped among the rocks under a scrawny fir. He had built a wind screen of brush against a boulder, and they had crawled within. There he had held her locked in his arms the whole night that she might rest while he watched and loved....

Other memories of their ardent years crowded this one. First she had taken the journeys with him, going to the mines, living in the camps. Then she had waited for him here at home, where he had placed her among her old friends, in this pleasant country house. He was often away, but he worked the more fiercely to get back to her. Once he had come wilfully, without warning, from British Columbia, three thousand six hundred miles, without a pause, hurled on his course by an irresistible desire to know that his joy was real, to see that she lived on the earth still and was his. He had arrived after dinner, and found her dressed to go out,—tall, white, beautiful,—more wonderful than in the camp he had dreamed she was. When she looked up and saw him,—the unexpected, welcome one,—she had given a glad cry, and lifted her arms and face to his, careless of the maid, her gown, his travel-stained self....

“I had two or three days, and I thought I would come on,” he had said, repaid already in good fact....

She had her memories, too. Her woman’s life was woven with the little intimacies of the seven married years. Their life together, their passion and joy,—it blazed before her in the stillness. She had thought it was to go on like that always, for many years, fading perchance when they were old into something gentler, less abundant. Now, suddenly, in the space of a few days, she was brought to see that such joy had a term set within her own experience. It was past!

“We have loved so much,” she murmured. “We have been so happy. That is over now.”

He nodded, bringing her hands to his lips. He knew what she meant. The old joy, the careless pleasure of their early selves, had gone under the shadow. Something out of them had been created in those hours of freedom, which was now asserting its control over them,—something from the past, unknown to them, gathered up and expressed through them. They were now to be less, and this which had come out of them was to be more. Sorrow or satisfaction, it was all one,—it was to be met and borne with. Youth had passed; selfish joy had been blown away—there remained their child.

“Little Oscar,” the mother murmured. “We must do what we can for him, mustn’t we?”

“All that can be done!” he exclaimed.

“Live with him, take him away from here, fight for him,” she whispered. “As long as he lives. As long as we live!” Her tears fell upon his hands.

“Yes! that is it. We must fight together for the child as long as we live!”

And they both divined something of how the years must be, living not for themselves but largely for their child, changing their life as his needs changed, preparing to struggle with him against the odds of his fate.

“Where is he?” he asked.

They found him playing by himself under a great tree. When he saw them coming across the lawn, he stood very still and watched their faces, looking at them keenly. His mother took his hand and leaned over to kiss him. He put his other hand up to his father. Thus they walked slowly back toward the house, the child gravely marching between his parents, holding them to him, one on either hand.