It was a solid fact that from the day of her subjection to the rod and rule of her overlord, Ada found life more bearable; and watching her, at first in puzzlement, Theodore came by degrees to understand the reason for the change in her which was induced—so it seemed—by the threat and magic of an osier-wand. In the end he realized that the fundamental cause of her sodden, stupid wretchedness had been lack of effective interest—and that in finding an interest, however humble, she had found herself a place in the world. Her interest, in the beginning, was nothing more exalted than the will to avoid a second switching; but, undignified as it was in its origin, it implied a stimulus to action which had hitherto been wanting, and a process of adaptation to the new relationship between herself and her man. By accepting him as master, with the right unquestioned of reward and punishment, she had provided herself with that object in life to which she had been unable to attain by the light of her own mentality.
With an eye on the osier-heap she worked that she might please and, finding occupation, brooded less; learning imperceptibly to look on the new world primitive as a reality whose hardships could be mitigated by effort, instead of an impossible nightmare. As she wrestled with present difficulties—the daily tasks she dared no longer neglect—the trams, shop-windows and chiffons of the past receded on her mental horizon. Not, fundamentally, that they were any less dear to her; but the need of placating an overlord at hand took up part of her thoughts and time. Too slothful, both in mind and in body, to acquire of her own intelligence and initiative the changed habits demanded by her changed surroundings, she was unconsciously relieved—because instantly more comfortable—when the necessary habits were forced on her.
With the allotment of her duties and the tacit definition of her status that followed on the night of her chastisement, their life on the whole became easier, better regulated; and the mere fact of their frequent separation during part of the day made their coming together more pleasant. Companionship in any but the material sense it was out of her power to offer; but she could give her man a welcome at the end of the day and take lighter work off his hands. Her cooking was always a matter of guesswork and to the last she was stupid, unresourceful and clumsy with her fingers; but she fetched and carried, washed pots and garments in the stream, was hewer of wood and drawer of water and kept their camp clean and in order. In time she even learned to take a certain amount of pleasure in the due fulfilment of her task-work; when Theodore, having discovered a Spanish chestnut-tree not far from their dwelling, set her the job of storing nuts against the winter, she pointed with pride in the evening to the size of the heap she had collected.
Now that she was admittedly his underling, subdued to his authority, he found it infinitely easier to be patient with her many blunders; and though there were still moments when her brainlessness and limitations galled him to anger, on the whole he grew fonder of her—with a patronizing, kindly affection. He still cherished his plans of exploration unhampered by her company but, from pity for the fears she no longer dared to talk of, refrained from present mention thereof; while the nights were long and dark it would be cruel to leave her, and by the time spring came round again she might have grown less fearful of solitude.... Or, before spring came, the world might make a sign and plans of exploration be needless.
Meanwhile, resigning himself to his daily and solitary round, he worked hard and anxiously to provision his household for a second winter of loneliness.
It was when the days were nearly at their shortest that the round and tenor of his life was broken by the shock of a disturbing knowledge. Trudging homewards toward sunset on a mild December evening, he came upon his wife sitting groaning in the path; she had been on her way to the stream for water when a paroxysm of sickness overtook her. Since the days of starvation he had never seen her ill and the violence of the paroxysm frightened him; when it was over and she leaned on him exhausted as he led her back to their camping-place, he questioned her anxiously as to what had upset her—had she pain, had she eaten anything unwholesome or unusual? She shook her head silently in answer to his queries till he sat her down by the fire; then, as he knelt beside her, stirring the logs into a blaze, she caught his arm suddenly and pressed her face tightly against it.
“Ow, Theodore, I’m going to ’ave a baiby!”
“What?” he said. “What?”—and stared at her, his mouth wide open.... Perhaps she was hurt or disappointed at his manner of taking the news; at any rate she burst into floods of noisy weeping, rocking herself backwards and forwards and hiding her face in her hands. He did his best to soothe her, stroking her hair and encircling her shoulders with an arm; seeking vainly for the words that would stay her tears, for something that would hearten and uplift her. He supposed she was frightened—more frightened even than he was; his first bewildered thought, when he heard the news, had been “What, in God’s name, shall we do?”
He drew her head to his shoulder, muttering “There, there,” as one would to a child, till her noisy demonstrative sobbing died down to an intermittent whimper; and when she was quieted she volunteered an answer to the question his mind had been forming. She thought it would be somewhere about five months—but it mightn’t be so long, she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t know enough about it to be sure—how could she, seeing as it was her first?... She had been afraid for ever so long now—weeks and weeks—but she’d gone on hoping and that was why she hadn’t said anything about it before. Now there wasn’t any doubt—she wondered he hadn’t seen for himself ... and she clung to him again with another burst of noisy weeping.
“But,” he ventured uncertainly, reaching out after comfort, “when it’s over—and there’s the baby—you’ll be glad, won’t you?”
His appeal to the maternal instinct had no immediate success. Ada protested with yet noisier crying that she was bound to die when the baby came, so how could she possibly be glad? It was all very well for him to talk like that—he didn’t have to go through it! Lots of women died, even when they had proper ’orspitals and doctors and nurses....
He listened helplessly, not knowing how to take her; until, common sense coming to his aid, he fell back on the certainty that exhausting, hysterical weeping could by no possibility be good for her, rebuked her with authority for upsetting herself and insisted on immediate self-control. It was well for them both that wifely obedience was already a habit with Ada; by the change in his tone she recognized an order, pulled herself together, rubbed her swollen eyes and even made an effort to help with the preparing of supper—whining a little, now and again, but checking the whine before it had risen to a wail.
She was manifestly cheered by a bowlful of hot stew—whereof, though she pushed it away at first, she finished by eating sufficiently; and, once convinced that the outburst of emotion was over, he petted her, though not too sympathetically, lest he stirred her again to self-pity. She was not particularly responsive to his hesitating suggestions anent the coming joys of maternity; more successful in raising her spirits were his actual encouraging pats and caresses, his assumption of confidence greater than he felt in the neighbourhood of men and women whose hands were not turned against their fellows.... He realized that, as the suspicion of her motherhood grew to a certainty, she had spent long, lonely hours oppressed by sheer physical terror; and he reproached himself for having been carelessly unobservant of a suffering that should long ere this have been plain to him.
He was longing to be alone and to think undistracted; it was a relief to him therefore when, warmed, fed, and exhausted by her crying, she began to nod against his shoulder. He insisted jestingly on immediate bed, patted and pulled at her moss-couch before she lay down, kissed her—whereupon she again cried a little—and sat beside her, listening, till her breathing was even and regular. Once sure that she slept, he crept back to the fire to sit with his chin on his hands; outside was the silence of a still December night, where the only sound was the rush of water and the hiss and snap of burning logs.
With his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, he stared into the fire and the future ... wondering why it had come as a shock to him—this natural, this almost inevitable consequence of the life he shared with a woman? He found no immediate answer to the question; understanding only that the animal and unreflecting need which had driven them into each other’s arms had coloured their whole sex-relation. They had lived like the animal, without any thought of the future.... Now the civilized man in him demanded that his child should be born of something more than unreasoning lust of the flesh and there stirred in him a craving to reverence the mother of his son.... Ada, flaccid, lazy, infantile of mind, was more, for the moment, than her prosaic, incapable self. A rush of tenderness swept over him—for her and for the little insistent life which might, when its time came, have to struggle into being unaided....
With the thought returned the dread which had flashed into his mind when Ada revealed to him his fatherhood. If their life in hiding were destined to continue—if all men within reach were as those they had fled from, there would come the moment when—he should not know what to do!... He remembered, years ago, in the rooms of a friend, a medical student, how, with prurient youthful curiosity, he had picked up a textbook on midwifery—and sought feverishly to recall what he had read as he fluttered its pages and eyed its startling illustrations.
As had happened sometimes in the first days of loneliness, the immensity of the world overwhelmed him; he sat crouched by his fire, an insect of a man, surrounded by unending distances. An insect of a man, a pigmy, whom nature in her vastness ignored; yet, for all his insignificance, the guardian of life, the keeper of a woman and her child.... They would look to him for sustenance, for guidance and protection; and he, the little man, would fend for them—his mate and his young....
Of a sudden he knew himself close kin to the bird and beast; to the buck-rabbit diving to the burrow where his doe lay cuddled with her soft blind babies; to the round-eyed blackbird with a beakful gathered for the nest.... The loving, anxious, protective life of the winged and furry little fathers—its unconscious sacrifice brought a lump to his throat and the world was less alien and dreadful because peopled with his brethren—the guardians of their mates and their young.