Chapter XIII: Dot Goes Baby-Lifting

'Me do you leave aghast
With the memories we amassed?'

Dot had picked up a book in morocco covers. It was lying on the sitting room table with a dozen others and she took it at random. The little mother was persisting in bringing the conversation round to the baby this evening, for the new fear in her heart would not allow her to let things take their own course any longer. She dwelt on his hair, the funny little habit he had of drawing in his lips, the dimple that dented one little cheek just below the left eye.

So Dot took up a book to show she was too much occupied for conversation, but her lips were trembling. They had hitherto eschewed this subject entirely.

The book might easily have been any of the twelve others, but it happened to be Browning. She turned over the leaves, then, as that mechanical action did not quieten the little mother, she was forced to read.

And the very words Larrie had marked for her once quite years ago when they had only been engaged and used to play at quarreling! It was a finger nail mark and ran along one whole verse.

'Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you
For the good and true.
And the beauteous and the right,
Bear with a moment's spite
When a mere mote threats the white.'

A great tear splashed down upon it. Dot wiped it off with a hasty hand, she was angry because the coldness and bitterness around her heart were melting. But two more fell, and two again, a host of little sweet recollections of their married and unmarried life came thronging unbidden. How could she bear life if on every hand episodes of the dead days were going to rise up in this way?

Dear tender eyes watched her from the corner.

'He looked ill, my darling,--as if he had not slept or eaten for a week,--I saw him at the station--' the soft voice paused for a minute.

'It is nothing to me,' was the cold, piteous answer.

'He hadn't his obstinate look at all,--when he saw me he looked suddenly as if he was going to cry, then he turned round and walked up the road again quickly.'

Dot saw his face, the quick softening of his mouth and eyes. She could hear his very footsteps going away.

'I shall never forgive him while I live,' she said, but she had crept round to the chair in the dim corner and was feeling for her mother's arms.

They drew her down, down,--two women were rocking and crying just out of the reach of the lamplight.

Half an hour later they were hurrying down the hill to the cottage. Dot's eyes were tender, the great peace of forgiving was in her heart; she was going to her husband, the one man in the world who was all her own and God-given,--between them what question could there be of pride?

Two hundred yards from the gate she stopped, there was a fallen tree worn smooth with years of sitting upon.

'Wait here, little mother,' she said; 'let me go alone. Then we will come back and fetch you.'

She pressed on by herself, a tender smile parted her lips. Larrie thin and sleepless! Larrie aching for the touch of her hand--Larrie whose love was so desperate he could not help being cruel!

She crushed herself through the broken palings at the bottom of the bush paddock, then she crept along in the shadow of the trees, up through the garden till voices floated down to her and stopped her. Laughter came from the verandah and smoke, and there were two decanters on a little table, with a flickering lamp.

Larrie was entertaining two bachelor friends and was holding a pipe with one side of his mouth, and with the other telling a late witticism of a Supreme Court judge. The men had come up about taking the cottage, and almost suspected a domestic crisis; Larrie's forced spirits deceived no one but Dot in the shadow of the pepper trees.

She felt frozen with shame and horror. This was the man she would have humbled herself for! She turned to go back in silence the way she had come. But on the verandah there was a sudden movement; someone had discovered it was half-past eight, and being a Thursday evening the last train went down in eight minutes. They had their hats and sticks in ten seconds, and were halfway down the path. Larrie went with them.

'I'll see you safe in,' he said, 'we'll have to run for it.' His shadow fell at Dot's feet, then raced him down the road leading to the station.

Dot breathed freely once more, then with steady steps she went up the path and round the verandah to Peggie's window.

The woman was on her knees by the bedside, reading the _Bulletin_ by candlelight. She always abstracted it from the dining-room on Thursdays, the moment Larrie laid it down, for she had a strange passion for political caricatures, though to her knowledge she had never seen a Member of Parliament in her life. To-night she was convulsed over a minister of the crown portrayed in an eye-glass and ballet skirts.

Dot crept in through the back door and went on tiptoe down the hall to the second room there. She made a warm bundle of the baby with the cot blankets and a New Zealand rug, then she went out into the hall again, holding it close to her happy breast. Larrie had left the front door just ajar, so she stole out noiselessly and walked down the path to the gate.

The next minute she was fleeing up the road again to her mother, the burden in her arms the lightest thing in the world.