The Bond/Part 2/Chapter 3
III
TERESA, however, took the baby seriously, and by dint of this conscientious care began to be fond of him. She resigned herself to the task of nursing him, supervised minutely the details of his daily life, and carried out Basil's theory that the baby must be saved all nervous excitement. He was named Ronald Grange, after her father. In the course of a few weeks he lost his black bristles and began to acquire a fuzz of soft brown hair; his eyes, after wavering in colour, decided to be brown, like Basil's; his complexion from brick-red became first a curious yellow, and then approached fairness. Teresa began to feel that he might ultimately be presentable. He was a strong child with a determined will to live. Major Ransome pronounced him a beauty, and in his grandfatherly delight called on the baby three of four times a week. Grandparents, however, were peculiarly obnoxious to Basil's theory; the poor Major was not allowed to hold Ronald Grange, or to prod any portion of his anatomy with a doting finger, or to chirrup to him. Basil considered that even looking at the baby as he lay in his crib was self-indulgence on the part of the elders which might involve some nervous strain for Ronald Grange. Basil was about the house pretty constantly for some time after the baby's birth, informing Teresa that he couldn't yet settle down to work. He kept a sharp eye on the nurse, and if Teresa fed the baby too early or too late he knew it. He kept many visitors away from Ronald Grange, and Teresa's Aunt Sophy went away in a passion because, after three visits, she had not yet succeeded in seeing the baby. Teresa, however, took advantage of Basil's occasional absences. She herself was not allowed to hold the baby any longer than was strictly necessary. But several times when Basil was well away she actually played with Ronald Grange, tickled the soles of his feet, kissed the back of his neck, and once, the Major arriving in the midst of such an orgy, she took pity on the poor old man and let him have his share. That day Ronald Grange was trotted on the Major's knee, chucked under the chin, poked in the ribs, and whistled to. Teresa felt guilty, and watched Ronald for some days for signs of nervous prostration. But there was now a bond of crime between her and the Major, and they continued at intervals to furnish the baby with contraband amusement.
Mrs. Perry had been, in Florida for February and March. When she returned to town she came at once to see Teresa. Basil was not at home, and Teresa allowed the baby to be brought in, at Mrs. Perry's demand.
"I've brought some things for him," said the lady. "Oh, what a darling!"
Teresa looked sceptically at the baby's mottled face, and at her visitor; but Mrs. Perry's expression, as she took the baby and tucked it up against her shoulder, and touched its fuzzy head with her cheek, silenced the sceptic. Teresa watched curiously. Mrs. Perry walked up and down the room with the baby, and then sat down, holding him as though he were made of delicate crystal.
"How warm and soft they are!" she breathed, her full-lidded dark eyes closing slowly. "I like that smell of warm flannel. They're just like little birds, all soft down! What a darling!"
Teresa said nothing. She was thoroughly surprised. When the nurse came to take the baby. Mrs. Perry produced her gift—two little dresses beautifully sewed by hand. "I made them every stitch myself for him," she said. Teresa was oddly touched by this. Alice had sent the baby an ivory with gold bells. Many other gifts had been sent to him, but no one else she knew had actually made anything for him. Mrs. Perry asked to see his bed and his wardrobe, and she turned over his tiny garments with caressing fingers. When she went away Teresa thought Mrs. Perry was going to offer to kiss her, but to her relief it did not happen. She would not have liked to kiss Mrs. Perry, though she liked her.
She liked her with the calm and civilised part Of her intelligence, and at the same time obscurely hated her. She appreciated Mrs. Perry's good qualities, liked the way she treated herself, but would not have been sorry to hear that some calamity had befallen that lady, for example, the loss of her good looks. Teresa knew that an intimacy existed between Mrs. Perry and Basil, and she did not know the extent of it. Basil had assured her that it was not an emotional relation, except in so far as Mrs. Perry had an emotional need for a friend to whom she could talk freely and profoundly, and look for sympathy. But Teresa believed that Basil would lie in such a case, though probably in no other. With her he had proceeded on a general plan of extreme frankness. Recognising the impersonal and almost masculine element in her intelligence, and allowing it, perhaps, more weight than it really possessed in her total make-up, Basil had laid bare to her all his ideas and feelings, and most of his doings. For the first year of their marriage he had had nothing to conceal, and his natural disposition to frankness, rather brutal sometimes and partaking a little of the crystalline hardness of his nature, had had full sway.
A cardinal point of his doctrine was that only emotional infidelity counted, and he passionately assured Teresa that this was quite out of the range of possibility for him. She tried to believe him.
But there were so many other things besides love, in this essential sense! And Basil's interest in the sex was as wide as the world. He had an inexhaustible curiosity, which he called psychological, and which Teresa called puerile; a keen, almost romantic, sense of the drama of life; a need of all sorts of free and indefinite human relations. His theories were in favour of absolute freedom among civilised beings in a generation which was profoundly anarchic. Teresa distrusted all theories. At the same time, intellectually, she approved of Basil; but this fact, as she pointed out to him, might not prevent her from hating him, and some time doing him an injury.
"I cannot get rid of the sense of possession," she said. "I regard you as my property, and your interest in other women as stolen from me. I know it's absurd, but you can't account for feelings, or get rid of them, either."
"So I am your property," said Basil. "But you don't want to lock me up, do you? You wouldn't care a snap for me if I was interested in nothing but you. It's because I know a lot of others that I know how much nicer you are."
"That's all very well, but I wish I didn't care. Sometimes I wish you hadn't told me things. Scenes come up to me—pictures—all sorts of things. Then I hate you."
"Oh, I forget sometimes that you're a woman," said Basil, with a humorous sigh. "I talk to you as I would to a man. And you like it."
"Oh, I like it well enough. But—perhaps it isn't so awfully clever of you."
"Why not? Why? What do you mean?"
She smiled and wouldn't answer. When he pressed her to speak, she shook her head enigmatically. Basil took her by the throat and threatened to choke her if she didn't explain; whereat she laughed, and said gaily:
"Never mind. We're good friends, anyway. I think we always shall be, and like each other best of all. It doesn't matter if we amuse our- selves a little by the way. There—that's the point of view I'm striving to reach."
"You are? Well, I thought you'd always had that point of view."
"In a purely abstract way, but I want to feel it—I want to put it into practice. I hate mere theories."
"That's all right—but a good many theories ain't practicable," said Basil, after a pause. "There's a difference, you know."
"A difference where?"
"Between you and me, for example."
"Oh, I'm sure of it. Many of your amusements wouldn't appeal to me at all. But I understand all you say about the claims of the temperament, and, do you know, I believe I have got a temperament, too! I'm certain I'm dying to be amused. And, then, if I am amused, I shan't mind if you are. You may investigate life as much as you choose, and make all the psychological experiments you please. And I won't be a bit jealous. I've made up my mind to get rid of that mean, sneaking feeling, and I will. And this is the way to do it."
"What is? You've always had your friends, if that's all. There's Page, and Alvord—and Dallas spends hours alone with you every week."
"Gerald! Dear old Gerald! … No, I'm not talking about him!"
"Well, who then, you little wretch?"
Basil laughed heartily and contemplated his wife with easy admiration. But she cast a glance at him from under her lashes, smiled slightly, and began to talk about something else.
••••••
She spent the summer with the baby at a dull resort on the Maine coast; and this rounded out an entire year devoted to Ronald Grange. Ronald was weaned, and throve, and began certainly to pay for himself. He was a vigorous and beautiful little creature; and Teresa, who bathed him herself and mixed his food and watched his sleep on the sands, now learned the intimate sweetness of his small, definite personality, felt the soft charm of his unfolding intelligence and expressiveness, was infinitely touched by his dependence on her, and his consciousness of it. She came to love him with part of the emotion that hitherto had been given only to Basil.
Except for the baby, Teresa was bored; she lived a perfectly hygienic life, and saw that she grew more beautiful. Basil's warm recognition of this fact, during the month that he spent with her, lent a new interest to life. Their separation, the first since their marriage, was due to money necessities. Basil had found that an income which sufficed for two self-indulgent people was not enough for two and a baby; and he had been painting pot-boilers for Mrs. Perry, who had a scheme for decorating her library with views of the natural beauties of America. He had been bored, too, as his daily letters showed Teresa; he had longed for her, restless in the loss of their companionship and the domestic atmosphere which satisfied some deep need of his nature; and when he finally came it was like an ardent burst of the south wind—a storm of happiness. He wanted to spend his whole day beside Teresa, to talk to her half the night; he was even jealous of the baby. It was a new honeymoon, more passionate than the first, and Teresa now first began to feel the full power of her beauty. Basil's æsthetic appreciation of her had grown steadily; she pleased him now more deeply than ever; and she rejoiced, for some instinct told her that, holding Basil by this feeling and by his domestic side, she held the real man.