"Quack, quack!" said Aggie, and three shrill voices echoed her.

Aggie had to be the duck herself now; for Daddy had long ago given up his part in the spirited drama.

They had been married six years, and Aggie had had six children. There was Arty and Catty and Willie and d.i.c.k and Emmy (the baby of the year); and a memory like a sword in her mother's heart, which was all that was left of little Barbara, who had come after Catty.

It seemed as if there was not much left of Aggie, either. Her delicate individuality had shown signs of perishing as the babies came, and the faster it perished the faster they took its place. At each coming there went some part of pretty Aggie's prettiness; first the rose from her cheeks, then the gold from her hair, till none of her radiance was left but the blue light of her eyes, and that was fainter. Then, after Barbara's death, her strength went, too; and now, at the end of the day she was too tired to do anything but lie on the sofa and let the children crawl all over her, moaning sometimes when they trampled deep. Then Arthur would stir in his arm-chair and look irritably at her. He still loved Aggie and the children, but not their noises.

The evenings, once prolonged by gas-light and enthusiasm to a glorious life, had shrank to a two hours' sitting after supper. They never went anywhere now. Picture-galleries and concert-halls knew them no more. The Debating Society at Hampstead had long ago missed the faithful, inseparable pair--the pair who never spoke, who sat in the background listening with shy, earnest faces, with innocence that yearned, wide-eyed, after wisdom, while it followed, with pa.s.sionate subservience, the inane.

Arthur had proved himself powerless to keep it up. If an archangel's trump had announced a lecture for that evening, it would not have roused him from his apathy.

And as they never went to see anybody, n.o.body ever came to see them. The Hampstead ladies found Aggie dull and her conversation monotonous. It was all about Arthur and the babies; and those ladies cared little for Arthur, and for the babies less. Of Aggie's past enthusiasm they said that it was nothing but a pose. Time had revealed her, the sunken soul of patience and of pathos, the beast of burden, the sad-eyed, slow, and gray.

The spirit of the place, too, had departed, leaving a decomposing and discolored sh.e.l.l. The beloved yellow villa had disclosed the worst side of its nature. The brown wall-paper had peeled and blistered, like an unwholesome skin. The art serge had faded; the drugget was dropping to pieces, worn with many feet; the wood-work had shrunk more than ever, and draughts, keen as knives, cut through the rooms and pa.s.sages. The "Hope"

and the "Love Leading Life" and the "Love Triumphant," like imperishable frescos in a decaying sanctuary, were pitiful survivals, testifying to the death of dreams.

Saddest of all, the bookshelves, that were to have shot up to the ceiling, had remained three feet from the floor, showing the abrupt arrest of the intellectual life.

It was evident that they hadn't kept it up.

If anything, Arthur was more effaced, more obliterated, than his wife. He, whose appearance had once suggested a remarkable personality, a poet or a thinker, now looked what he had become, a depressed and hara.s.sed city clerk, no more. His face was dragged by deep downward lines that accentuated its weakness. A thin wisp of colorless mustache sheltered, without concealing, the irritability of his mouth. Under his high, sallow forehead, his eyes, once so spiritual, looked out on his surroundings with more indifference than discontent. His soul fretted him no longer; it had pa.s.sed beyond strenuousness to the peace of dulness. Only the sounds made by his wife and children had power to agitate him.

He was agitated now.

"That will do," he said, looking up from the magazine he was trying to read, not because it interested him in the least, but because it helped to keep the noises out.

But the children were clamoring for an encore. "Again, again!" they cried.

"Oh Mummy, _do_ do it again!"

"Hsh-sh-sh. Daddy's reading." And Aggie drew the children closer to her, and went on with the rhyme in her sad, weak whisper.

"If you must read aloud to them, for goodness' sake speak up and have done with it. I can't stand that whispering."

Aggie put down the picture-book, and Arty seized one half and Catty the other, and they tugged, till Catty let go and hit Arty, and Arty hit Catty back again, and Catty howled.

"Can't you keep those children quiet?"

"Oh, Arty, shame! to hurt your little sister!"

At that Arty howled louder than Catty.

Arthur sat up in his chair.

"Leave the room, sir! Clear out this instant!" His weak face looked weaker in its inappropriate a.s.sumption of command.

"Do you hear what I say, sir?"

Arty stopped crying, and steadied his quivering infant mouth till it expressed his invincible determination.

"I'll g-g-g-go for Mommy. But I w-w-w-won't go for Daddy. I doesh'n't 'ike him."

"Hsh-sh--poor Daddy--he's so tired. Run away to the nursery, darlings, all of you."

"I can't think why on earth you have them down here at this time," said their father, as the door slammed behind the last retreating child.

"My dear, you said yourself it's the only time you have for seeing them.

I'm sure you don't get much of them."

"I get a great deal too much sometimes."

"If we only had a big place for them to run about in--"

"What's the use of talking about things we haven't got, and never shall have? Is supper ready?"

She raised herself heavily from her sofa, and went to see, trailing an old shawl after her. Arthur, by way of being useful, put his foot upon the shawl as it went by.

After supper he felt decidedly better, and was inclined to talk.

"I met Davidson this morning in the city. He said his wife hadn't seen you for an age. Why don't you go and look her up?"

Aggie was silent.

"You can't expect her to be always running after you."

"I can't run after her, I a.s.sure you. I haven't the strength."

"You used," he said, reproachfully, "to be strong enough."

Aggie's mouth twisted into a blanched, unhappy smile--a smile born of wisdom and of patience and of pain.

"My dear, you don't know what it is to have had six children."

"Oh, don't I? I know enough not to want any more of them."

"Well--then--" said Aggie.

But Arthur's eyes evaded her imploring and pathetic gaze. He turned the subject back to Mrs. Davidson--a clumsy shift.

"Anyhow, it doesn't take much strength to call on Mrs. Davidson, does it?"

"It's no good. I can't think of anything to say to her."

"Oh, come, she isn't difficult to get on with."

"No, but I am. I don't know why it is I always feel so stupid now."

"That," said Arthur, "is because you haven't kept it up."

"I haven't had the time," she wailed.