The doctor saw a pale self-contained young man before him, and thought him strangely wanting in emotion.
'Well!' said he, impatiently. 'Is she all right?'
'Yes. Won't you take your son?'
'Could she see me?'
'I don't suppose five minutes would do any harm.'
Dr. Jordan said afterwards that it was three steps which took Frank up the fifteen stairs. The nurse who met him at the corner looks back on it as the escape of her lifetime. Maude lay in bed with a face as pale as the pillow which framed it. Her lips were bloodless but smiling.
'Frank!'
'My own dear sweet girlie!'
'You never knew. Did you, Frank? Tell me that you never knew.'
And at that anxious question the foolish pride which keeps the emotions of the strong man buried down in his soul as though they were the least honourable part of his nature, fell suddenly to nothing, and Frank dropped with his head beside the white face upon the pillow, and lay with his arm across the woman whom he loved, and sobbed as he had not sobbed since his childhood. Her cheek was wet with his tears. He never saw the doctor until he came beside him and touched him on the shoulder.
'I think you had better go now,' said he.
'Sorry to be a fool, doctor,' said Frank, blushing hotly in his clumsy English fashion. 'It's just more than I can stand.'
'Sir,' the doctor answered, 'I owe you an apology, for I had done you an injustice. Meanwhile your son is about to be dressed, and there is hardly room for three men in one bedroom.'
So Frank went down into the darkening room below, and mechanically lighting his pipe, he sat with his elbows upon his knees and stared out into the gathering gloom where one bright evening star twinkled in a violet sky. The gentle hush of the gloaming was around him, and some late bird was calling outside amongst the laurels. Above he heard the shuffling of feet, the murmur of voices, and then amid it all those thin glutinous cries, HIS voice, the voice of this new man with all a man's possibilities for good and for evil, who had taken up his dwelling with them. And as he listened to those cries, a gentle sadness was mixed with his joy, for he felt that things were now for ever changed--that whatever sweet harmonies of life might still be awaiting him, from this hour onwards, they might form themselves into the subtlest and loveliest of chords, but it must always be as a trio, and never as the dear duet of the past.
CHAPTER XXII--THE TRIO
(Extract from a letter to the Author from Mrs. Frank Crosse.)
'It is very singular that you should say with such confidence that you know that our baby is a splendid one, and further on you say that in some ways it differs from any other baby. It is so true, but neither Frank nor I can imagine how you knew. We both think it so CLEVER of you to have found it out. When you write to us, do please tell us how you discovered it.
'I want to tell you something about baby, since you so kindly ask me, but Frank says there is no use my beginning as there is only one quire of paper in the house. As a matter of fact, I shall be quite short, which is not because I have not plenty to say--you cannot think what a DEAR he is--but because he may wake up at any moment. After that happens I can only write with one hand, while I wave a feather fan with the other, and it is so difficult then to say exactly what you mean. In any case you know that I have not the habit of collecting and writing down my ideas, so please forgive me if this seems a stupid letter. Frank could have done it splendidly. But he has so many sweet and quite REMARKABLE ways, that I ought to be able to put some of them down for you.
'It will be easier perhaps if I imagine a day of him--and one of his days is very much like another. No one could ever say that he was irregular in his habits. First thing in the morning I go over to his cot to see if he is awake yet--though, of course, I know that he can't be, for he always lets us know--the darling! However, I go over all the same, and I find everything quiet and nothing visible of baby, but a tiny, turned-up nose.