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Keir insisted upon Sybil’s going to see a doctor, and not as a mere panel patient. In fact he took her himself to be examined by the physician who attended at Darvels, and it appeared that Sybil was three months pregnant. She was a healthy young woman with a normal pelvis, and the doctor reassured Keir, while warning him that he himself had ceased to attend maternity cases. He left the midwifery to his two junior partners.

Keir understood. The doctor who attended the Lugards was a man of five-and-fifty who would sacrifice his sleep only for exceptional cases, and Sybil’s was not an exceptional case; so Sybil was transferred to one of the junior partners.

“Dr. Richards will look after you just as well as I should,” which was true, and when Keir had seen Dr. Richards, he gathered that Sybil would be in good hands.

Keir’s financial responsibilities enlarged themselves. No longer was it a question of considering a pound of tea or half a pound of butter. A new life had to be prepared for, and as yet the State does not provide free baby-linen and bassinets! Sybil was to be her own seamstress in the matter of the little creature’s wardrobe, but when she and Keir came to investigate the problem, they were shocked at the amount of money they would have to spend. What with one thing and another, the trousseau of the hypothetical small Smith would cost them nearly twenty pounds.

“It does seem an awful lot, Keir.”

Keir was being very gentle with her.

“No use doing the thing by halves, Syb.”

“Of course—if it happens again, it won’t be quite so expensive.”

Keir did not say that it was essential that such a luxury should be curtailed, but he was thinking of it. Too many children could be a curse to a crowded community, whose urge was to escape from the crowd. One child would be sufficient, or at all events for the time being. These domestic etceteras would keep him marking time on the ladder.

But he did not present his views to Sybil, for he was realizing the limitations of Sybil. She might be a lovable creature, but she was no pioneer or social climber. He had begun to see his wife as a dear and rather unpractical person, or so confusedly practical that she might involve herself and him in a little world of social compromises. She was more content with elementary things than he was. Her short-sighted brown eyes did not look very far ahead.

His urge was to work more furiously, but so far as work was concerned, Keir was fully exploiting his present possibilities. Also, Sybil and the moods of the young mother were in conflict with too much overtime, and Keir gave up working late. Sybil disliked being alone. She was ready to be considered and caressed. She had moments when she was afraid of the ordeal ahead of her, and she liked to have Keir there by the fire while she sewed at those baby garments.

He cleared away the tea-things and washed up for her, and sometimes he would sit on the hearth-rug at her feet and she would pass her fingers through his insurgent hair.

“Which do you want, Keir?”

Keir had no prejudice in favour of either sex. If he asked anything of fate, it was that Sybil should come safely through the crisis, though both of them were pretending that the bearing of a child was hardly more alarming than getting married.

“Well—I suppose I ought to want a girl.”

“Let’s imagine it’s a girl. We ought each to choose a name. You think of one.”

Keir was staring at the fire, and a name seemed to rise like a flame.

“Joanna.”

“Joanna! What an unusual name, Keir! Where did you get it?”

He remembered that the name had been that of a heroine in a book that had impressed him considerably.

“Out of a book, Syb.”

“I suppose we should shorten it to Jo. My name’s much more simple. Mary.”

He repeated the names—“Mary Joanna Smith,” and the rhythm of them pleased him. It was good English.

“Where did you get your name, Syb?”

She laughed.

“Why, silly boy, it’s my other name.”

“Of course. But I always think of you as Sybil.”

Yet if she was Sybil, she was so much else, and the secret self of Keir was following the implications of this present and this future. Inevitably he saw himself with far less freedom than a year ago, and if he regretted it, he did so with compassionate resignation. Yes, this was life, a far more complex affair than the filling in of a time-sheet. The path would be a little more circuitous and full of hazards, the old, well-worn path of the multitude, trodden by generations of men and of women. You could not take a comrade and then quarrel with her because your effort was for two or three instead of one. Your courage and your power might be enlarged by the duality if you were rightly man.

Also, he had the courage to confront this increasing complexity. That which he had dreamed of was a little farther off. He might have to tramp ten miles instead of five. His savings would be less; he would be more involved in the present while still pressing steadily towards the future. He was not afraid. As yet life had not infected him with its dreadful and elemental fear.

Working at his bench in the carpenter’s shop, with old Tower beside him, he would look through the window at the yard with its building material and high black fence. The lilac bush had shed its leaves, but the ghosts of its flower spikes were visible. Less than a year ago—spring and the lilac blossom and the solitude of his dreams upon the downs! Now a builder’s yard and bricks and drain-pipes and the limitations of that little hutch in Paragon Place. Sometimes he had a feeling that the exquisite virtue of youth had gone from him. The flower of the lilac had fallen. He was just a little fellow working in a shop.

He would glance at Thomas Tower and reflect upon the old man’s gentle absorption in his work. It was a kind of ritual, patient and predestined, and for old Tower that lilac might flower once or twice or thrice. But in his youth had this docile and rather inarticulate craftsman felt—as he—Keir—felt? Had Tower conceived some dream edifice of his own and lived to find it—Babel?

One afternoon, when the yard was growing dim, Keir asked his neighbour at the bench a question.

“How long have you been in this shop, Tom?”

Old Tower’s large, mild face was turned to the sky.

“How long? Oh, a matter of thirty years. We’d better have the lights on. My eyes aren’t what they were.”

Thirty years at the same bench in the same shop!