The Judgment of Eve | Page 8

all the wood-work shrank, and the winter
winds streamed through their sitting-room, Aggie said nothing but put
sand-bags in the window and covered them with art serge.
Her mother declared that she had never stayed in a more inconvenient
house; but Aggie wouldn't hear a word against it. It was the house that
Arthur had chosen. She was sorry, she said, if her mother didn't like it.
Mrs. Purcell was sorry, too, because she could not honestly say that, in
the circumstances, she enjoyed a visit to Aggie and her husband. They
made her quite uncomfortable, the pair of them. Their ceaseless
activities and enthusiasms bewildered her. She didn't care a rap about
the lectures, and thought they were mad to go traipsing all the way to
Hampstead to harangue about things they could have discussed just as

well--now, couldn't they?--at home. Aggie, she said, would become
completely undomesticated. Mrs. Purcell was never pressed to stay
longer than a week. They had no further need of her, those two sublime
young egoists, fused by their fervors into one egoist, sublimer still. Mrs.
Purcell was a sad hinderance to the intellectual life, and they were glad
when she was gone.
Heavens, how they kept it up! All through the winter evenings, when
they were not going to lectures, they were reading Browning aloud to
each other. For pure love of it, for its own sake, they said. But did
Aggie tire on that high way, she kept it up for Arthur's sake; did Arthur
flag, he kept it up for hers.
Then, in the spring, there came a time when Aggie couldn't go to
lectures any more. Arthur went, and brought her back the gist of them,
lest she should feel herself utterly cut off. The intellectual life had, even
for him, become something of a struggle. But, tired as he sometimes
was, she made him go, sending, as it were, her knight into the battle.
"Because now," she said, "we shall have to keep it up more than ever.
For them, you know."

V
"'I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea, And it was full of pretty
things for Baby and for me.'"
Aggie always sang that song the same way. When she sang "for Baby"
she gave the baby a little squeeze that made him laugh; when she sang
"for me" she gave Arthur a little look that made him smile.
"'There were raisins in the cabin, sugared kisses in the hold.'"
Here the baby was kissed crescendo, prestissimo, till he laughed more
than ever.
"'The sails were made of silver and the masts were made of gold. The

captain was a duck, and he cried--'"
"Quack, quack!" said Arthur. It was Daddy's part in the great play, and
it made the baby nearly choke with laughter.
[Illustration: "'Quack, quack!' said Arthur, and it made the baby nearly
choke with laughter"]
Arthur was on the floor, in a posture of solemn adoration somewhat out
of keeping with his utterances.
"Oh, Baby!" cried Aggie, "what times we'll have when Daddy's ship
comes home!"
The intellectual life had lapsed; but only for a period. Not for a moment
could they contemplate its entire extinction. It was to be resumed with
imperishable energy later on; they had pledged themselves to that.
Meanwhile they had got beyond the stage when Aggie would call to her
husband a dozen times a day:
"Oh, Arthur, look! If you poke him in the cheek like that, he'll smile."
And Arthur would poke him in the cheek, very gently, and say: "Why, I
never! What a rum little beggar he is! He's got some tremendous joke
against us, you bet."
And a dialogue like this would follow: "Oh, Arthur, look, look, look, at
his little feet!"
"I say--do you think you ought to squeeze him like that?"
"Oh, he doesn't mind. He likes it. Doesn't he? My beauty--my bird!"
"He'll have blue eyes, Aggie."
"No, they'll change; they always do. And his nose is just like yours."
"I only wish I had his head of hair."

It was a terrible day for Arthur when the baby's head of hair began to
come off, till Aggie told him it always did that, and it would grow
again.
To-day they were celebrating the first birthday of the little son. At
supper that night a solemn thought came to Aggie.
"Oh, Arthur, only think. On Arty's birthday" (they had been practising
calling him "Arty" for the last fortnight) "he won't be a baby any
more."
"Never mind; Arty's little sister will be having her first birthday very
soon after."
Aggie blushed for pure joy, and smiled. She hadn't thought of that. But
how sad it would be for poor baby not to be the baby any more!
Arthur gave an