The next day she got a letter from Mrs. Bullivant, dated from the Master's House, Ananias College, Oxford.

"_It may interest you to hear_," wrote Mrs. Bullivant, "_that your sister has a little daughter. The child was born at daybreak this morning. I am worn out with watching. It is a very fine little girl, and both mother and child are doing well. I am not doing well at all. We had that excellent Dr. Williamson, I am thankful to say, or I don't know what would have happened. Of course our darling Judith was mercifully spared knowing anything about it, for she was kept well under chloroform, but I knew and I feet very upset. I only wish I, too, could have been chloroformed during those anxious hours. As it is I am suffering much from shock, and it will be a long while before I recover.

Dr. Williamson says that on these occasions he always pities most the mothers of the mothers. Your father_--"

But here Ingeborg let the letter drop to the floor and sat thinking.

When Robert came in to dinner late that day, hot and pleased from his fields which were doing particularly well after the warm rains of several admirably timed thunderstorms, she gave him his food and waited till he had eaten it and begun to smoke, and then asked him if she were going to have chloroform.

"Chloroform?" he repeated, gazing at her while he fetched back his thoughts from their pleasurable lingering among his fields. "What for?"

"So that I don't know about anything. Mother writes Judith had some.

She's got a little girl."

Herr Dremmel took his cigar out of his mouth and stared at her. She was leaning both elbows on the table at her end and, with her chin on her hands, was looking at him with very bright eyes.

"But this is cowardice," he said.

"I'd _like_ some chloroform," said Ingeborg.

"It is against nature," said Herr Dremmel.

"I'd _like_ some chloroform," said Ingeborg.

"You have before you," said Herr Dremmel, endeavouring to be patient, "an entirely natural process, as natural as going to sleep at night and waking up next morning."

"It may be as natural," said Ingeborg, "but I don't believe it's as nice. I'd _like_ some chloroform."

"What! Not nice? When it is going to introduce you to the supreme--"

"Y'es, I know. But I--I have a feeling it's going to introduce me rather roughly. I'd _like_ some chloroform."

"G.o.d," said Herr Dremmel solemnly, "has arranged these introductions Himself, and it is not for us to criticise."

"That's the first time," said Ingeborg, "that you've talked like a bishop. You might be a bishop."

"When it comes to the highest things," said Herr Dremmel severely, "and this is the holiest, most exalted act a human being can perpetrate, all men are equally believers."

"I expect they are," said Ingeborg. "But the others--the ones who're not men--they'd _like_ some chloroform."

"No healthy, normally built woman needs it," said Herr Dremmel, greatly irritated by this persistence. "No doctor would give it. Besides, there will not be a doctor, and the midwife may not administer it. Why, I do not recognise my little wife, my little intelligent wife who must know that nothing is being required of her but that which is done by other women every day."

"I don't see what being intelligent has to do with this," said Ingeborg, "and I'd _like_ some chloroform."

Herr Dremmel looked at her bright eyes and flushed cheeks in astonishment. Up to now she had rejoiced in her condition whenever he mentioned it, and indeed he could see no reason for any other att.i.tude; she had apparently felt very little that was not pleasant during the whole time, known none of those distresses he had heard that women sometimes endure, been healthily free from complications. There had been moods, it is true, and he had occasionally found her lounging on sofas, but then women easily become lazy at these times. It had all been normal and would no doubt continue normal. What, then, was this shrinking at the eleventh hour, this inability to be as ordinarily courageous as every peasant woman in the place? It was a most unfortunate, unpleasant whim, the most unfortunate she could have had. He had been prepared for whims, but had always supposed they would be tinned pine apples. Of course he was not going to humour her. Too much was at stake. He had heard anaesthetics were harmful on these occasions, harmful and entirely unnecessary. The best thing by far for the child was the absence of everything except nature. Nature in this matter should be given a free hand. She was not always wise, he knew from his experience with his fields, but in this department he was informed she should be left completely to herself. If his wife was so soft as not to be able to bear a little pain what sort of sons was she likely to give him? A breed of shrinkers; a breed of white-skinned hiders. Why, he had not asked for gas even when he had three teeth out at one sitting two years before--it was the dentist who had insisted he should have it--and that was only teeth, objects of no value afterwards. But to have one's son handicapped at the very beginning because his mother was not unselfish enough to endure a little for his sake....

Ingeborg got up and came and put her arms round his neck and whispered.

"I'm--frightened," she breathed. "Robert, I'm--frightened."

Then he took her to the sofa, and made her sit down beside him while he reasoned with her.

He reasoned for at least twenty minutes, taking great pains and being patient. He told her she was not really frightened, but that her physical condition caused her to fancy she thought she was.

Ingeborg was interested by this, and readily admitted that it was possible.

He told her about the simple courage of the other women in Kokensee, and Ingeborg agreed, for she had seen it herself.

He told her how G.o.d had arranged she should bring forth in sorrow, but she fidgeted and began again to talk of bishops.

He told her it would only be a few hours' suffering, perhaps less, and that in return there was a lifetime's joy for them in their child.

She listened attentively to this, was quite quiet for a few minutes, then slid her hand into his.

He told her she might, by letting herself go to fear, hurt her child, and would she not in that case find difficulty afterwards in forgiving herself?

This completed her cure. An enormous courage took the place of her misgivings. She rose up from the sofa so superfluously brave, so glowing with enterprise, that she wanted to begin at once that she might show how much she could cheerfully endure. "As though," she said, lifting her chin, "I couldn't stand what other women stand--as though I wouldn't stand _anything_ sooner than hurt my baby!" And she flung back her head in the proudest defiance of whatever might be ahead of her.

Her baby, her husband, her happy home--to suffer for these would be beautiful if it were not such a little thing, almost too little to offer up at their dear altar. She would have been transfigured by her shining thoughts if any thing could have transfigured her, but no thoughts however bright could pierce through that sad body. Her outlines were not the outlines for heroic att.i.tudes. She not only had a double chin, she seemed to be doubled all over. She looked the queerest figure, heavy, middle-aged, uncouth, ugly, standing there pa.s.sionately expressing her readiness to begin; and Herr Dremmel unconsciously seeing this, and bored by having had to explain the obvious at such length and spend a valuable half hour bringing a woman to reason--why could they never go to it by themselves?--wasted no more words having got her there, but brushed a hasty kiss across her hair and went away looking at his watch.

And next day, just as she was putting the potatoes into that dinner-pot that so much simplified her cooking, she uttered a small exclamation and turned quickly to Ilse with a look of startled questioning.

"_Geht's los_?" asked Ilse, pausing in the wiping dry of a wooden ladle.

"I--don't know," said Ingeborg, gasping a little. "No," she added after a minute, during which they stood staring at each other, "it wasn't anything."

And she went on with the potatoes.

But when presently there was another little fluttering exclamation, Ilse, with great decision, laid down her gloomy drying-cloth and sought out Johann, Herr Dremmel not having come in, and bade him harness the horses and fetch Frau Dosch.

"The first thing," said Frau Dosch, arriving two hours later, surprisingly brisk and business-like considering her age and the heat, "the first thing is to plait your hair in two plaits."

And still later, when Ingeborg had left off pretending or trying to be anything at all, when courage and unselfishness and stoicism and a desire to please Robert--who was Robert?--were like toys for drawing-room games, shoved aside in these grips with death, Frau Dosch nodded her head philosophically while she ate and drank from the trays Ilse kept on bringing her, and said at regular intervals, "_Ja, ja_--was sein muss sein muss."

Such were the consolations of Frau Dosch.

CHAPTER XX

These things began on Tuesday at midday; and on Wednesday night, so late that bats and moths were busy in the garden and often in the room, Frau Dosch, grown very wispy about the hair and abandoned in the dress, dabbed a bundle of swaddle with a small red face emerging from it down on to the bed beside Ingeborg and said, tired but triumphant, "There!"

The great moment had come: the supreme moment of a woman's life. Herr Dremmel was present, dishevelled and moist-eyed; Ilse was present, glowing and hot. It was a boy, a magnificent boy, Frau Dosch p.r.o.nounced, and the three stood watching for the first ray of _Muttergluck_, the first illumination that was to light the face on the pillow.

"There!" said Frau Dosch; but Ingeborg did not open her eyes.

"There!" said Frau Dosch again, picking up the bundle and laying it slantwise on Ingeborg's breast and addressing her very loudly. "Frau Pastor--rouse yourself--behold your son--a splendid boy--almost a man already."

She took Ingeborg's arm and laid it round the bundle.