Читать книгу The Middle of the Road - Philip Gibbs - Страница 4

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The child was a boy. It had perfect features, like a miniature Joyce, but after a glance and a whimpering cry, she wouldn’t look at it again. Bertram knelt by his wife’s bedside, trying to hide the wetness of his eyes. She put her thin fingers through his hair and caressed him, but after a short time said, “You worry me, rather,” so that the nurse signalled to him to go away.

Bertram had felt an immense sense of relief at the sight of Joyce lying at peace after her ordeal. She was faintly flushed, and had all her beauty back, with a youthful, almost boyish look, touched by the character of her “bobbed” hair.

He turned at the door and glanced back at her, and when she opened her eyes again he kissed his hand to her with all his heart in that gesture of love, but she shut her eyes without response.

During his first reaction to the knowledge that Joyce was safe he had not worried over the death of the baby, except for Joyce’s sake. It was only later that he began to think of the child. Something of himself lay dead in that cradle in the dressing-room to which it had been carried by the nurse. If it had lived—

His imagination wandered through the years ahead. There would have been a companion for him, a little pal. He would have taught the boy to ride, to play games, to face up to life, to be a gentleman. Not a snob! No, he would have taught him to be tolerant, and “democratic” in old Christy’s way, with understanding of folk in the mean streets of life. He could have told that son of his something of the men he had commanded in the war, those Cockney fellows who had been all nerves and all pluck with a wonderful sense of humour. His son! … Young Bertram! … How fine that would have been! Life would have been less lonely—and, Lord! how lonely it had been with Joyce upstairs, and a nurse in the house, and the two maids whispering about the passages while he sat alone in his “study” with nothing in the world to study except his introspective thoughts! …

That night he went on tip-toe to the dressing-room, turned up the electric light, and drew back the coverlet from the face of the still-born child. His son! What a queer mite! Like a wax doll, with something of Joyce’s look, and something, perhaps, of his own. He kissed the tiny dead face, and then drew back sharply because of its coldness. Not that he was afraid of death. He had seen many men die, and dead. But this little thing was Joyce’s babe. That was piteous! After all her suffering! Oh, God! … Was it for the best? Had God been kind? There was something in life now which seemed to spoil things. Some trouble seemed to be brewing for further tragedy. That was what old Christy thought. The old foundations were slipping away. The War had shaken them too much. The next generation might have to go through worse things than their fathers. Fathers who had been good soldiers but not much good in time of peace, and found it hard to get a decent job!

Bertram Pollard covered the face of the still-born child, switched off the light, and went downstairs again. He wrote out an advertisement for The Times—Joyce’s friends would want to know—and then, for hours, sat brooding until he fell asleep, and was only wakened by the “Lor’, sir!” of the parlourmaid, Edith, who came in to tidy his room. She was very sorry for him, and said so in her chatty way.