Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/922

854 "You go rest now yourself," Mrs. Darcy admonished. "I'll send you over some fried chicken and beaten biscuit for dinner, and you take things easy till to-morrow."

Darcy was already asleep. Gertrude stood looking down at him with a great heartache for them both. How lonely God must feel, she thought, whimsically, with no one to look up to! And yet—what was she to ask the ideal? There had to be give and take in any relationship. If she hadn't perfection, she had a great deal more than nothing. She had taken the best life had offered her. Neither failure nor success, realization nor disappointment, was ever absolute; there was always compensations, always things to make the best of. The philosophy of the "common woe" which only drives some temperaments to pessimism over the general lot gave Gertrude optimism over the personal.

In the girl's dream of love it was the Prince who played the leading part, the instinct of wifehood that was uppermost. But if that and all the rest—self-confidence, pride, loyalty, "hope eternal," the vulgar hunger for bread and cheese and kisses—had been in the beginning, and still were to less extent, threads in her cat's-cradle of motives, by this time one instinct had become her predominant, habitual self; so that her whole life slipped out into a single continuous ring of meaning. Why had she no children, indeed? How often she had asked herself that question undisturbed by any such considerations as Miss Darcy's. But after nine years it was the accepted inevitable. That was a bitter disappointment; Ned was not—exactly. Perhaps if there were children he might If there were more beauty about the house, perhaps  But she couldn't be other than she was. And what time or money had she for herself?

It was the decision of an old debate that sent Gertrude next day to the Children's Home. They were all out playing; the matron, who knew her, said, would she look at them so?

"No, no; I want a little one, a baby."

"I'm afraid we haven't any. Oh, that?" She followed the visitor to where one of the older girls sat with a little bundle on her lap. "You wouldn't be interested in him, Mrs. Darcy. The mother—well, he was a surprise gift-baby for us; born in our wood-shed; the mother dying when we found her."

"Poor little unfortunate!"

"Yes,—and sickly, too."

Gertrude stooped for him, and straightway he began to wail.

"Better take him back, Mary," the matron said to the caretaker.

"No, no," Gertrude protested, cuddling him. "Oh, who's this? Marie Miller? Yes, she is a pretty child. Two years? Yes, it is a dear age."

"And of good stock, Mrs. Darcy,—just unfortunate."

"And perfectly healthy? She looks it, yes."

"How she takes to you!"

"Oh yes, of course, she's the kind I came to get—I ought to get. But this poor little thing " At last reluctantly she yielded up the fretting baby and made arrangements about Marie.

But half-way home with the child, Gertrude turned back. "I can't do it," she apologized. "I must have that baby. But I promise not to neglect Marie for him."

"Both?"

"Yes, I might have as much as that, don't you think? It doesn't seem too selfish, does it?"

The matron wondered momentarily if she ought to trust either to her.

Mrs. Harold Darcy nearly had apoplexy before she remembered to laugh. "By wholesale! Twins! Oh dear, dear, do rub me between the shoulders! How does she ever expect to manage, poor and busy as she already is?"

"Of course it's funny," Anne Harcourt agreed, "but it's more pathetic. Gertrude Renshaw was such a splendid girl!"

"And what's Gertrude Darcy?" demanded her aunt-in-law, with a most unusual definiteness of admiration. "I used to think it a great pity too, but I don't know! Gertrude always would be lavishing herself on some poor benighted beings; and I don't see that it does them much harm, or would matter if it did. The dog, the rabbit, and the canary have very different outlooks on life."

Darcy took the additions as seriously and impractically as Gertrude, and fan-