SNOW fell, covering the scarred earth with its deep and merciful white. The baby will love the winter, Kate thought, looking out at the snow-thickened branches, the white fur hats on the gateposts, little Hoagland Driggs with his red cheeks and red muffler being pulled past on his sled by the Driggs' hired man. She was miserable, she was frightened, tears came for nothing at all, but deep in her heart lay a still clear happiness, a promise she never doubted.
Spring came, with mud and crocuses. Kate felt well and cheerful again, strolling in what she tried to remember to call the garden, instead of the back yard, feeling the delicate warmth of the sun; or lying on the studio divan, listening to the rain on the skylight. She had her days of despair, orgies of gloom when she planned with tender sorrow for her motherless baby and bade poor Joe exalted farewells; she had hours when she was gossiping with Carrie, eating something she liked, or reading the new novels Joe brought her, when she forgot completely that she was going to do such an important and grown-up thing as have a baby. She had breath-stopping moments when she was caught up, beyond words, beyond thought, to look wide-eyed into the blazing sun.
Summer came, with its gift. Joseph Montgomery Green, Jr., was born in July, when the stars began to drown in the first faint light.
He was a good, healthy baby, existing as peaceably as possible through Kate's panics. If he cried she was frantic with worry; if he slept quietly her heart would stop, she would catch him up from his crib to make sure he hadn't died in his sleep. Lizzie and Joe were sent after Doctor Wells at all hours of the day and night. Mrs. Driggs was always "slipping over," herself, or sending little Hoagland to inquire:
"Why, Mrs. Green, why, mamma says to tell you she saw the doctor's carriage and she says is anything the matter with the baby, and, why, mamma says is there anything she can do, she said to say."
Mr. and Mrs. Driggs were kind—forgiving, too, for Joe wouldn't ask them to dine, and of course they knew every time the Greens had a party.
"Oh, you don't know what it is to have a baby! "Kate, happy, important, worried, would tell Carrie and Miss Smith with unintentional cruelty. "The responsibility! Look, Miss Smith. Ought his head to wabble so?"
"Oh, my doodness, but it was a ducky-wucky-wuck, so it was!" Miss Smith cried, adoring across the fence. "It was just the booflest baby that ever came to town, wif dose dreat bid blue eyes!"
"And our fat pink cheeks!" Carrie Pyne moaned. "And our legs! Have you seen our great big fat legs, Miss Smith?"
"I dess his papa and mamma don't like him one little bit!"
"He says, No, Miss Smith, they just think I'm a little ugly-mug. They think I'm a little good-fornothing nuisance, and they're just going to give me to the rag-man," Kate replied, complacently, while Jodie looked at the world with wide opaque blue eyes, drooling dreamily, or buried pink fingers in Miss Smith's dusty frizz.
Joe brought home presents for his little boy—fishes and swans and frogs to swim in his bath; a bell-hung Punchinello with a squeaking stomach, dressed in white-and-scarlet satin, a lamb bigger than Jodie, mounted on its wheeled green meadow. And later, when Jodie was teething, not able to sleep, it was his father who could soothe him.
"You go to bed, Katie. I'll get him off."
Kate, sinking into peace, would hear him singing, hoarse with sleepiness:
Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow-wow, wow wow.
I have a little cat, and I'm very fond of that.
But I'd rather have a bow-wow wow wow wow wow
Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow-wow, wow wow"
until tired mother and tired baby were both asleep.
They took Jodie down to the Lakeside Studio, to be photographed. He posed all alone, without a stitch, on Mr. Minty's black fur rug. His eyes were round with astonished interest. Mr. Minty said he had never seen such a good baby.
When the photographs came home, mounted on palegray cardboard, with "Fred E. Minty, Westlake," in silver loops, Lizzie was scandalized. "I think it's shameful," she told Kate, severely. "Not even a didy on him!" But Kate thought they were beautiful. She wrote "Joseph Montgomery Green Jr. 6 months old" on their backs, and sent them, glorious Christmas presents, to Aunt Alice and Uncle Fred, to Nellie Verlaine.
Jodie's first Christmas!
Joe had the most beautiful tree from the woods behind the haunted house, brought swishing over the snow. It stood in the parlor among all their little things—the bamboo table, the bead portière with its pattern of storks, the wrought-iron piano lamp and its ruffied shade of terra-cotta silk. Beautiful, simple, filling the house with the scent of the forest.
Joe and Kate trimmed it on Christmas Eve with the ornaments he had bought—silver bugles, rosy bubbles, gold and silver stars. Long silver strands dripped like rain from the dark-green branches, and colored wax candles slanted drunkenly.
Lizzie was allowed—was urged—to bring her married sister, Annie Sullivan, and the little Sullivans, in to see it. Annie was satisfactory under coaching, and the children, who looked on its wonders with a calm that Kate was unable to shake, were reported to Joe as having been "absolutely speechless! If you could have seen those little faces!"
She did her best to make Charlotte and Hoagland go into ecstasies.
"Isn't it a lovely tree, Charlotte?"
"Yes, thank you, Aunt Kate."
"Did Santa Claus bring you a beautiful tree like this, Hoagland?"
"Our tree's bigger," said Hoagland, firmly,
"See all the little icicles!"
"Those aren't icicles; they're glass."
"And see the little wax angel, Charlotte. Isn't that sweet? And see all the lovely Christmas presents Santa Claus brought little Jodie!"
"Did he bring him a pair of skates?"
"Why, no, Hoagland! Jodie's too little to skate yet."
"Santa brought me a pair of double-runner skates."
"Well, wasn't that kind of him? And see the little silver sailboat, Charlotte—see, when Aunt Kate shakes the bough it goes up and down as if it were sailing over the waves, doesn't it?"
"Yes, Aunt Kate."
"Mrs. Green. Mrs. Green. Mrs. Green"
"Yes, Hoagland?"
"Did Santa Claus bring Jodie a Regina music box? I gave Jodie that cow. It goes moo! Look! When you twist its neck. It cost fifteen dollars. Did Santa bring Jodie a magic lantern? Mrs. Green. Did Santa bring Jodie a magic lantern?"
Carrie Pyne was the one really satisfactory person to show off to, so admiring and impressed.
"Look, Carrie, this umbrella, with a duck's head for a handle—the bill is real amber, if you please! It's made in England. Joe says English umbrellas are the best. Did I show you this fan? He gave me this, too—did you ever? Look at the way the spangles shine when I wave it; it's even prettier at night. And look, my dear! Seed-pearl earrings! Really I had to scold him."
"Kate Green, I never saw such beautiful things in all my life! You certainly are a lucky girl."
"And that isn't all, Carrie. Will you look at this silver toilet set? See, brush, comb—everything! Buttonhook! Everything you can think of."
And then she was filled with remorse—boasting to Carrie, who had so little, when she had everything. Her present to Carrie had been the silk workbag Nellie Verlaine had sent last Christmas; it was pretty, Dresden silk with blurred pink roses and gray leaves, but who on earth would want it? She hadn't. She had said in a musing voice: "See, Joe. From Nellie Verlaine. I think it's very pretty—really very pretty," and put it back in its tissue paper again, and there it stayed until she wrapped it in fresh tissue, with scarlet ribbon and a sprig of holly, not one of the sprigs with the most berries, and a card saying, "Merry. Christmas to Carrie with Kate's best love." And here was poor Carrie saying with a beaming face that it was her nicest present. She was ashamed of herself.
On Christmas night Joe lit the candles on the tree. They shone reflected in the baby's eyes as he lunged in his father's arms with reaching hands; they shone through his silky fuzz of hair, making a halo. And suddenly Kate felt as if her heart had cracked in her side from terror. Is it a sign? Does it mean my baby's going to die? Oh, don't let my baby die!
Some day my baby must die.
"Joe! Give me Jodie!"
She grew weak with the exquisite reassurance that flooded her from the warm sweet weight of her child's body. His lashes lay on his round pink cheeks, one dimpled hand with its creased wrist fell relaxed on her knee. To hold him, this way, safe
I wish I could keep him safe forever! If there is sorrow coming to my child, I wish I could take it instead.
Joe was puffing out the candles; wax had dripped on the fallen balsam needles on the rug, and a branch of the tree that had caught in a candle flame made the air aromatic. He threw a pine log on the fire, and the flames licked around it.
How lonely we are, Kate thought. Oh, what was the matter with her to-night? These gloomy thoughts—she must be tired. But it was true. Here were the two beings closest, dearest to her in all the world, and she was utterly apart from them—her husband, smoking his pipe, looking into the fire, her sleeping child, shut in sleep like a closed bud that holds its secret and its promise. Speak to me, speak without words, my darlings!
A log fell apart, the fire leaped up, shining on the topmost star of the Christmas tree. Up there, above the shadowy green, it seemed to float, a real star in shadowy darkness, a star of hope, to lead travelers on through the dark.